A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

Copper is a useful material in many applications. I have some copper-bottomed pots that I adore, and if I ever remodel my kitchen, I’d love to have some of that pretty copper tile with designs on it. But I hate, hate, hate copper piping.

I’m not sure how the previous owners of my house managed to keep everything copper. If they had as much trouble as we have with the plumbing, they would have had to replace some things at some point. But every bit of the pipes that I’ve seen appear to have been there for eons. Copper pipes are pretty much impossible to find any more, so we’ve had to replace everything that’s had to be replaced so far with pex piping.

Every time we have a little trouble with the copper, we have to spend a lot more on fittings and such than we would with some other type of piping. And pex is flexible and durable, so you’re much less likely to have trouble out of it. Maybe one of these days we’ll be able to afford to get it all redone with it.

Hi there. Remember me? I used to blog here. Haven’t been doing that so much lately, though.

The new year hasn’t been kind to me so far, and that’s why I haven’t been around. I could write a big, long post about it, but I don’t think I will. I’d rather just forget about it all, and bits and pieces will probably come out in future posts anyway. So I’ll try not to bore you to death with details here.

But in summary, I’ve been horribly ill, finally got on medication for depression and panic attacks, and had to contend with major plumbing problems all last week. I spent a lot of time when I didn’t feel like doing anything but lying in bed waiting around in various hardware stores, looking at fancy Whirlpool dishwashers and Toto toilets that I can’t afford while waiting on employees to help me. A few hundred dollars later, we finally got the water going again.

Things are finally somewhat back to normal, so maybe I’ll get something accomplished today. The jury’s still out on whether or not the medication (Prozac, to be specific) will help. I started it on New Year’s Day, so the two week mark is coming up, and that’s how long the doctor said it would take to kick in. I hope it does the trick.

This house desperately needs to be replumbed. It has those awful copper pipes, and they’re in poor repair. It wouldn’t hurt to have all new fixtures either- shower head, kitchen and bathroom faucets, toilet, the works.

When you just barely turn on the water in the kitchen, it makes a horrible noise. It kind of sounds like a jackhammer. And we’ve got a mystery leak coming from the bathtub that we can’t quite figure out. It only leaks every once in a while, so maybe things will be okay until we can investigate further.

At least we did get the shower going. Hubby’s cousin saw to that. When he took the paneling off of the wall outside the bathroom, we knew instantly what the problem was: The pipe was completely unhooked! I haven’t a clue why, but it’s par for the course. From everything I’ve seen, the previous owners of this house weren’t the brightest crayons in the box.

It won’t be cheap, but hopefully once Hubby starts his new job we can start saving up to redo it all. If we don’t find something that we think needs attention before that, that is.