Teaching #2: St. Paul Water

After a splendid long weekend on the North Shore, 50k of skiing, and 3 days of gorgeous scenery, Jessie and I both said one thing when we got back home tonight.  “Oh man, now that is good water.”  It is amazing to me how something so simple can be so strikingly different from our home in St. Paul, a friend’s house across the river in Minneapolis, and at the lodge on the North Shore of Lake Superior.

Water is water, right?  You add a little mineral to a can of Coke and no one knows the difference, but you add a little mineral to something so simple, and it is blatantly adultered.  Drinking water from the tap is something you know like the smell of your wife, or the feel of your own bed.  It is home, and there’s nothing like home.

Lesson #3: A little conversation with my old house

Over the years, I have come to many understandings with my 1930s House in St. Paul.  The latest was when my House told me 2 weeks ago, "David, pipes fitted 80 years ago are like petrified wood."  I said, "I know, old House, but it comes down to either paying a plumber to come and work on your innards or I can do it and then we'll have some money to give your tub a new white finish.  You've seen the tub... It is a hideous 1 part pink with 1 part brown color."

The issue was that we had a leak behind the tub inside the 2nd floor wall coming from somewhere in the plumbing underneath the bathtub, and it was time to fix it.  My House agreed I was allowed to explore its innards, as did my wife, that I was allowed to enter the historic plumbing inside the upstairs wall in search of the slow drip of water.  That was 2 weeks ago, and it has also been 2 weeks since we have showered in the bathroom.

Here's the issue.  My House was built as if it was on Summit Ave. in St. Paul.  Every piece of plumbing solid brass.  Every faucet solid brass, hand forged.   So I had isolated the leak, removed the petrified plumbing and went to Menards to get a replacement piece of brass.  That's when I ran into issue #1... The threads on the brass plumbing are European and only made in the time period between 1920 and 1930.  Brilliant.  Here's what we were working on inside the wall.

So, I was stuck replacing the whole lot of pipe instead of just the one that was leaking.  Anyone who has worked on old houses knows this is how things usually go.  But, the rest of the pipe did not come loose, so I was going to have to cut it out.  The house always warns me to avoid getting in too deep, but this was the only choice.  This is where I got myself to after 2 hours with a hack saw and Dremel 9600.

 

Now the problem was that I didn't have enough of a stub to attach the new pipe to.  Anyways, after making a couple new friends at Gopher Plumbing in St. Paul, I got the tub fixed, and there are NO LEAKS!  Yesterday, we refinished the old cast iron bathtub as promised with the extra money I had saved by working on this project myself for 2 weeks, buying a couple tools, etc., instead of hiring a plumber for two hours.  The bathroom looks great, and we'll shower in it tonight.  The House and Jessie agree.  Time for the next project.