There’s a hole in the wall of my kitchen.
(click on the thumbnail for a bigger picture)
What happened was that the sink backed up on Monday night. It normally drains slow, but it never backs up to the point that it’s half-full with water. I tried plunging and black goo came back. Yum. So we called maintenance and they tried snaking it. In the end, we determined than there were too many turns in the pipe and they couldn’t go in through the kitchen sink. They wanted to use our access panel in the bedroom closet. Problem being? We don’t have one.
The maintenance guy, Daniel, insisted we did. I replied we didn’t. This went on for a while until I dragged his ass into the bedroom and made him look in the closets. Oh look! No access panel!
Daniel says he’ll talk to his boss, and I think that he’ll forget. So I call in the office at 9am today (Tuesday) and explain ‘They have to break open my wall. I need to be home for this shit.’ Thankfully the office is amused and understanding. Then I go down and grab the building manager’s assistant. I tell my tale of woe, and mention ‘and Daniel said he’d tell y’all.’ Oh look! he didn’t!
The Maintenance manager and his assistant (Al, who is my hero), come out and listen to the story. Al says he knows we don’t have an access panel, the boss is surprised, and Al explains that the only place to put it is in the kitchen, and the wall there is solid plaster, not dry wall, and that won’t work for various reasons. The boss says do it in the closet, and I point out how hard that’ll be to clean and get to. Al says he’ll be by at 11am and he’ll try the kitchen. Boss is skeptical.
Al swings by at 9:30am to change our air filter, plays with our cat, and then looks at the pipes. He taps the wall and points out where someone cut into the kitchen wall last time. It only takes him ten minutes to figure out that he can indeed do the kitchen. Horay!
11:15am, Al hauls Daniel in and makes a hole in the kitchen wall. See the picture. They drill into the pip, get the snake, route it out and bam. We’re in business. After lunch they came back to patch the wall, and it’s now a grey splotch instead of a hole, which means I can let the cat out to roam.
Adventures.
And to think, I meant to write about the programs I have on my Palm…