Our house is about 23 years old, as are most of the other houses in our neighborhood. (We live in a big neighborhood with 1,500 homes.) About 6 years ago we started to notice that various home improvement and home repair contractors were parked in the driveways of homes all through the neighborhood on a regular basis. I guess that was about the point when all of the houses started to really show their age. Since then the volume of plumbing vans, electrical vans, painting vans, roofing trucks, window replacement trucks, brick masons, siding, yada yada yada (you get the idea) has grown steadily. I’m sure some of these guys are able to sustain their whole business off of residents solely in our neighborhood.

Well our house has not been immune to the aches and pains of growing old. But we’ve done our best to ignore problems until they become absolutely necessary to repair. So now we have a long list of broken things throughout the house, and they are prioritized by estimated cost and how long we think we can live with it broken.

The latest addition to the list is a leaking garbage disposal under the kitchen sink. Mr. Right was washing some pots and pans the other evening when he noticed that his shoes were soaking wet. At first I suggested that he was just being sloppy and was splashing water onto his feet. But then he pointed out that the water was in fact cascading out of the bottom of the cabinet.

So we quickly removed the 4,397 items that we had under the sink and sponged up all of the water. Now we’ve got a bucket sitting there to catch the drip. But that will only get us by for so long. This is now the highest priority on the repair list.

Fortunately we just met one of our neighbors who happens to be a plumber. Mr. Right has actually been helping him setup his blog (you can see it by clicking on Woodstock Plumbing). So sometime in the next few days our driveway will be one of the many with a repair van in it.

Wish us luck!

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