Posted by Jim at January 7th, 2006

I dread home improvement projects because they almost always turn out to expand exponentially from what I originally anticipated I would have to do. This turned out to be no exception to the rule.

We don’t have an official arrangement about who does what in home improvement projects, but here’s what it appears to be:

1. Kristen plans out the project, gets the necessary materials, and does the research. She then does all the stuff directly related to the project. Thus, in a tile project, she cuts, puts down morter, lays tile and grouts.
2. I, in turn, end up being responsible for the parts of the project that require more muscle than she can provide or don’t have anything to do with the main part of the project.

Thus, in the last project, I was responsible for removing the tub surround and putting up concrete backerboard (something that turned out to be far beyond my abilities…). In this project, I’ve been responsible for troubleshooting wet saw problems (I know nothing about wet saws) and taking out the kitchen sink (ditto).

And that’s how I nearly destroyed our furnace today.

Here’s what happened: Our kitchen includes cutoff valves for the sink and dishwasher, allowing me to take out the sink without turning off all the water in the house. Unfortunately, I only noticed two of the three valves. The third was hidden by the water filter.

When I began detaching the connection between the cold water line and the faucet, I noticed a little water coming out at the point I was turning. Knowing that water sometimes ends up in the line, I got a bucket.

Moments later, I made the final turn of the wrench.

Buckets turn out to do very little good when the water starts shooting out of the pipe, hitting the bottom of the sink, covering the floor of the kitchen, and pouring through the floor into the basement.

While I frantically tried to re-attach the cable to the cold water line, Kristen ran downstairs to close the main. She couldn’t find it. I ran downstairs. I could find it, but I couldn’t get a good grip on it because my hand was wet.

I tried using pliers to grip it. No dice. I pulled off my sweatshirt and wrapped it around the little wheel used to control the valve.

It worked.

Unfortunately, while all this was happening, the water also poured down the heat register on the floor of our kitchen. The furnace turned on and suddenly we smelled an odd smell, one somewhat like a wood burning stove.

I turned off the furnace and started calling furnace repair businesses. Interestingly, none of them came out. They all told me the same thing. Turning off the furnace was a good idea because furnaces contain electronic components these days and having water touch them would be very bad. Fortunately for me, the electronic parts seemed to be untouched by water (I opened the service panel to check). Unfortunately for me, the bottom of the furnace contained a quarter inch of water.

This meant that I had to get the water out and run a fan directly into the furnace until things were dry. Turning it on too soon risked the possibility that the blower might fry, meaning that we would probably have to buy a new furnace.

This would make the business owner $2200 richer, but we would be very unhappy campers.

We kept the furnace off from 3 PM to 9 PM. When we finally did turn it on, everything worked. I got the sink out of the counter around 10:30 PM.

Kristen’s not doing any tiling tonight.