Dead Eye & Knockin' Knees

Recently Man and I were having lunch on the deck, chatting bout stuff. You know how it is, conversations start here and end there, no rhyme or reason, just remembering stories.

Back story, Man had knee trouble, surgery, off work for some time.  Carol views this as opportunity to do a little home improvement project.  There was this paneling on the bottom half of the kitchen walls.  Brown, well, ugly paneling. Course when we removed it, there was a lot of damage to the drywall underneath.  Drywallers we were not, and are not.  So, something must go over all this damaged dry wall, I find this really cool looking stuff to use.  I want to say it was cedar or something, did remind me somewhat of cedar shingles.  It came in different widths and lengths, and you played puzzle/designer by picking and choosing where and how the pieces were placed.  You left space between the pieces, giving depth to the wall.  I loved it!  Trouble was, it had to be applied piece by piece (who said I ever did anything easy??).  We decided to apply with panel adhesive, great stuff, but slippery and each piece of cedar had to be "held" in place until the adhesive dried.  So, we used number 4 finish nails for the "holding" assignment.

Man, with bad leg could not do a lot of this, so, Carol did.  I learned to hammer, use a glue gun for the adhesive, and cut with a sabre saw.  The project was coming along, I was loving it!

At some point, I believe it was one of the sons went down to the basement for something, and proclaimed, "Mmmmmmm, there is water on the floor down here."

YES there was!  The short of it, was that Dead Eye, aka Carol, had put a 4 finish nail (small nail, small!!!) dead center through a "T" in the plumbing in that wall between the kitchen and the half bath.  I think it was 1/4 inch pipe.

We had to pull my pretty new cedar off the wall, cut a hole INTO the dry wall and come up with a method to fix this leak.

Method chosen was for Man to take a propane torch and solder and repair the hole in the "T".  I believe the choice of the torch was made because of the water/dampness remaining in the pipe, the torch would "dry" out the moisture allowing the solder to stick and plug said hole. 

A soldering iron would not get things warm, errr hot enough or dry enough.

So, Man fired up the torch and, yours truly stood by with the fire extinguisher in the ready, in case he caught the house on fire.  And, there is the reason for the knockin' knees.  I had to stand there and watch him "heat" up the plumbing and the wall cavity, with my fingers on the "trigger" of the extinguisher.  When he successfully fixed the leak, I collapsed in a chair, because I could not stand any more.

In my imagination, I could hear us explaining this to the fire department as they put out the flames, errrrr, well, ole Dead Eye here got this "T" in the plumbing with a number 4 finish nail - - - - dead center too by the way.

After some digging through the photo piles, I found this photo, which sorta shows the cedar - it is that dark green stuff on the wall.  Even better, it shows the fire extinguisher, and THE VERY wall I did the deed to.  The hole was behind that microwave cart.  This is where my dead eye, ok, bad luck, and the water pipes made a small bit of "family lore".

Ya, family stories, Dead Eye & Knockin' Knees stories.  A few memories, a lot of giggles, and believe me, I don't care to ever repeat this experience.  But giving credit where credit is due, Man did a right good job with that torch, that pipe NEVER leaked again!

Copyright 2010, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

* Sabre saw image thanks to cbeasley.com (link not functional as of March 2019)

** Soldering iron and Propane torch images thanks to Sears

*** Fire extinguisher image thanks to ToysRUs (out of business as of March 2019)