View from the North 40: It's when that sinking feeling gushes over you

In a good two week’s worth of miscues and mishaps and daily trips to the plumbing store on our way to a fully functioning kitchen sink, my husband, John, won the Video-worthy Fail Moment of the Project award, which doesn’t exist, but should.

We’d been trading off different duties on the project and John tagged in one morning last week to install the shut-off valves on the hot and cold water lines — a task for which he had formulated a plan.

I suspect somewhere there exists a tombstone with the inscription “Victim of a clear and well-thought-out plan. R.I.P.,” though, to be fair, his morning wasn’t overtly life-threatening. Also to be fair, I did return home from work that day to find a significant amount of water on the floor, which I didn’t expect to see when I left that morning.

And when I say “significant amount” I mean, multiple gallons of water across the house end of the shop and all over the kitchen floor. I could smell wet sheet rock — a.k.a. it’s-called-drywall-for-a-reason — which had been finished and painted a mere few months ago.

It took me a good minute to get past the sight to hear what John was saying about the disaster, but as near as I can understand, it went like this:

In preparation for installing the shut-off valves, he shut down the main water line, got all tools and parts assembled, and with decisive action, cut the plugged end off the cold-water line. A logical start to the project.

Immediately, though, water came gushing out of the pipe. With force.

He plugged the end of the line with his thumb, because his quick-thinking instincts were functioning better than his good-planning brains. From there he had to figure out what he was going to do to solve this significant problem, which he already realized was a 30-gallon problem.

He’d forgotten to drain the pressure tank that, as soon as he released his thumb, would start gushing what was left of its pressurized 30-gallons across our floor.

OK. Sure, the floor could benefit from a good mopping, but a flood is a significantly different thing.

Now, I should say, for those who aren’t regular readers or otherwise in the know, John only has one arm, and at that moment — with his one hand occupied preventing a flood, like the tale of the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike — he had limited viable options for solutions. But he had good instincts.

Launching Emergency Plan A, he grabbed one of the shut-off valves and crammed it into the pipe, only to discover the valve was stuck in the open position and still spraying water unchecked.

For Emergency Plan B, he spun the valve so the water would be gushing straight down, grabbed a short plastic garbage can nearby and shoved it under the valve to catch water while he ran for the mop bucket, which was low enough to fit under the pipe and had wheels for transport.

By the time he returned with the mop bucket, the garbage can was overflowing across the kitchen floor.

He switched the receptacles, ran to the shop sink to dump the full garbage can — but the wet plastic slipped from his grip, and the can fell to the floor spewing water across the cement to the west wall. With no time to cry over spilled water, he grabbed the can, ran back to the leak, swapped receptacles again, wheeled the bucket out to dump it into the floor drain. But he got too exuberant with the pouring and flooded water across the floor to the east wall.

At this point, the scene became a flurry of him running back and forth trying to manage the catch-and-release of water until the tank had emptied. Which it did.

It was, he said, hard to tell how much flood water he actually caught and got dumped down a drain, how much of the worst of it he mopped up afterward and how much ran outside under the kitchen wall.

Miraculously, there was no harm in the end.

But we have three thoughts on the incident.

One, we need to set up surveillance cameras in the house to catch these precious moments.

Two, we never thought we’d be thankful for that significant bow in the cement floor toward the outside walls, and we will not complain of it again.

And three, we finally know what’s busier than a one-armed man hanging wallpaper — it’s the one-armed man running a bucket brigade.

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The entire brigade earned that afternoon nap at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .