the house that rebelled

Yesterday, Rob and I got home from a family birthday party and were excited to install the new (highly discounted) vanity that we had purchased from Home Depot the day before. We thought it would be no problem and it was the kind of project we could accomplish while watching the Super Bowl in the background. We got everything unloaded and prepared for install - vanity out of the box, sink cleaned off and out of the box, new faucet out of the box and organized with all its little pieces - we were starting this project off right! 

The only other step we needed to take for preparation was to turn the water off to the sink from the basement below. We knew from our lovely flooding experience (you can read more about that here) it was simple to shut off the water with the valves attached to the pipes - easy peasy. 

Not so much.

We went to the basement together to decide which pipes went to the sink (as opposed to the tub/shower) and they weren't hard to find at all; all the water pipes are in the unfinished side of our basement with our workshop and laundry area (and they are all exposed). Once we found the two, one for hot and one for cold, we turned them and I ran upstairs while Rob waited in the basement to see if it had worked. 

Just to give you an idea of what we were looking for and eventually turning,
here is the more modern version of what we have rocking out breaking in our basement. 

The hot water stopped right away. The cold water just ran and ran and ran...

Ok, let's try that again - the cold water pipe had a couple other possible valves on it along the line so we tried to turn those off. Again, the cold water just ran and ran and ran... 

Are you sensing a pattern here?

We went back to the first valve and tried turning it again. This time we noticed that the screw holding the cold water valve handle on wasn't turning (the hot water screw had turned). We tightened the bolt and tried again, nothing, we tightened a little bit more and the head of the screw popped right off. 

   

Now did I mention that the house was built in the 50's and it's likely that these aren't the original fittings but are probably pretty darned old? Not only did the head of the screw come right off, the handles of more than one valve bent as Rob tried to turn them... oh boy. 

Needless to say, we did not have an easy peasy time installing our new vanity. In fact, it didn't even begin to get installed. 

One thing we did learn is that our valves will most likely all need to be replaced to a more modern valve... woo hoo. 

Dear House, 

We weren't expecting to have to replace
 the water valves in the basement.  

What's up with that? Not cool. 

Sincerely, 

Your Frustrated Homeowners

Note: Though we are frustrated, we know that much worse things could happen! We are thankful that there wasn't any flooding, etc!