My friend Ben and I have a thing for difficult projects. His fascination is Alfa Romeos, quirky yet fun Italian cars that are stylish and sporty. He owns a couple, and is constantly improving and maintaining them. Italian engineering in the 1980s tended to focus more on style and performance than reliability or solid designs. Recently after a spate of issues at Ranchtastic, I began to wonder if I owned the Alfa Romeo of houses.

Shortly before we went to New Zealand, the shower drain in the master bathroom slowed. When I returned, it blocked completely. I called Bob, figuring I’d also have him unblock the master vanity sink which has drained slowly ever since we moved in. I wasn’t at home when he came by, and when I got home that evening I found evidence that some work had been done but no bill. The next day I checked my voicemail and found one from Bob that started “I’m sorry to tell you this but your whole house is…” … now just let me say that I hate it when voicemails start like this, especially the “your whole house is” bit. Is what? Tumbling down the hill? On fire? Falling into the sea? Backed up, it would seem. Being true to the California Rambler form, Ranchtastic is a wide house, 68 feet end to end. It has four bedrooms, but rather than having a wing for the living areas and a wing for all the bedrooms the design splits two bedrooms on either side of the large living spaces. As a result, I refer to the bedrooms on the west side as the “west wing” and the bedrooms on the east side as the “east wing”. A long cast iron sewer pipe connects the east to the west. This pipe was clogged. Ew.

Exacerbating things, the connecter pipe for the front bathroom had an impressive 2 foot crack in it, and due to the backup was now leaking sewage into the crawlspace. Yum. This was replaced. The front bathroom toilet had begun to leak as a result and had to be reinstalled with a new valve etc. Bob recommends replacing the long section of pipe between the crawlspace cleanout and the kitchen connection, because the surface is rough which causes it to attract debris.

This done, we could begin to resurrect the master bathroom. Leslie removed the ancient sliding glass shower door, which came from a time before safety glass (it had a wire matrix embedded in case it broke - and it had cracked). A trip to Lowes and Bed Bath & Beyond netted a spiffy new curved shower curtain rod and curtains, and some more frills for the front bathroom.

After all of this was installed Leslie woefully informed me that as a result of the driving rain, the house was now leaking around the window in the kitchen. Owning a big house in the country is something of a new experience for me so there are all sorts of maintenance things that I forget to do that I should, such as clearing leaves out of the gutters. The gutter over the den facing the driveway had clogged with leaves, and the runoff from the front guttering had nowhere to go so was spilling out off the edge and down the kitchen window, which wasn’t sealed properly at the bottom and so it was coming through onto the counters. Out I went into the void, clambering up onto a jittery ladder, crowbar in hand, shoveling dead leaves out onto the ground below. I managed to stop the waterfall, and once I reached the other end of the gutter plunged my hand into the dark water and forced the few leaves in there that were blocking the downspout through. There was a whoosh and the black water in the gutter quickly drained away. Hooray!

Crisis averted, I went back inside where it was toasty and warm.