13 Things I Would Never Hear Again if I Power Drilled Through My Eardrums

1. [Crash!]


2. "Dad?"


3. "Dad!"


4. "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!"


5. "Where the hell is dad?"


6. "If he was up your butt you'd know"


7. "Shut up!"


8. "You shut–"


9. [Crash!]


10. (Tandem) "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!"


11. "There he is. He's at his desk with his headphones on pretending he can't hear us–DAD!"


12. "WHAT!"


13. "The dog pooped on Uncle Marty's bed again."

Out of the Mouthes of Babes . . .

I know what I need to do.
I need to kill something.
That's going to help my self-esteem.

Roon, age 12, playing Call of Duty . . .

DIY: Installing a Vanity in 10 Easy Steps!

Death By Children is about more than the nefarious and deadly machinations of our spawn or their efforts to render us twitching and pale from their ongoing appropriation of internet porn slang. It's about a lifestyle, a way of going about your day with a kind of Zen focus, a way of being ever more self sufficient and capable. To that end, we present our ongoing series of Do It Yourself projects.

DIY #003: The Vanity.

Materials:

• A vanity.


• A sink.


• Channel locks


• Plumber's tape


• Plumber's crack


• Crescent wrench


• Screwdriver


• Hack saw


• Band-aids


• one sink kit (for installing the drain stuff)


• two 12" water supply lines


• The internet

Installation

1. Using the internet, start looking for a vanity. Use Google "shopping," eBay, and Half.com, late into the morning, discovering wild and gorgeous bathroom vanities worthy of a WalMart heir, vanities that look like they were carefully removed from the apothecary bathroom of a 14th century Amish alchemist. At about 3:41 am, wake up your wife and try to convince her to let you buy a $2,967.13 vanity that comes with a Belarian Granite sink, a black Tennessee marble sink insert, a burnished, teak cabinet made from the remains of President Lincoln's personal privy, and brass handles melted down from the recovered portholes of the Titanic. Try not to be discouraged as, even in her groggy and sleep deprived pre-dawn fog, your wife points out that the Lincoln vanity is a 32 inch top and we have a 26 inch space. Also, shipping is $541.32.


2. Find a vanity at Menard's online. This is awesome because it looks EXACTLY like the Lincoln vanity, only its made entirely from recycled elementary textbooks, sawdust, and glue. Order. Pay. Feel the warm flush of accomplishment rush through your body.


3. Remove the old vanity. This is easily accomplished by simply leaning on it to see where it is attached then letting it crumble beneath your application of modest pressure. Pull the pieces apart, and dispose.


4. Go to check on the width of your vanity online. Check. Notice a funny email from your bud that directs you to a website displaying pictures of people who shop at WalMart. Stop surfing this website only after your children come home from school and beg you to make them food. Menards is closed. So you'll have to get the vanity tomorrow.


5. Pick-up new vanity at Menard's where the plumbing department manager informs you that because you did not check a delivery option when you closed out your shopping cart online, they have not shipped your vanity. He fixes this. It should be here in about 10 days.


6. Act like it's all part of the plan. Scratch your chin. Say, yeah, yeah. That's what I was hoping. Buy a new toilet to make it look like you're there for a purpose because that little plumbing department manager weasel is eyeballing you like you're 113 years old and never heard of a shopping cart. Screw it, buy two new toilets. [see, DIY: Installing a New Super Flush Toilet in 5 Easy Steps].


7. Three days later, act non-plussed when Weasel calls to let you know your new vanity was shipped early. Go to Menard's to pick-up vanity. When asked if youneed any help out to your car, reply with a manly 'what-are-you-kidding-me?' shrug. Schlep the box out to the car. Recall that you drive a 2003 Camry and note the box for the vanity is 9 feet by 6 feet by 4 feet. Cram it in.


8. Unpack the vanity in the living room while sitting on the couch watching your DVR episode of MadMen. Don Draper would've built this thing from scratch.


9. Drag vanity to bathroom and slid it into place. My god, that is one beautiful vanity. Look at it. Run your fingers along the details on the bent-wood door. Look how it fits perfectly, how the door opens and closes without hitting. You sir, are a man.


10. Lie down on your back and shove your upper body into the cavity of the vanity. Install the p-trap, the drain pipe, and the drain valve. Get everything ready to connect to the existing drain. Note that the new vanity is four inches taller than the old one, that the sink is displaced to nine inches out instead of six and that your shiny new p-trap is about three miles away from your grubby old drain.


11. Buy a 9 inch drain extension.


12. Measure the gap between the existing drain pipe and the new on hanging below the sink. It's 6 inches.


13. Get the hack saw. Saw 3 inches off of the 9 inch straight pipe.


14. Drag the vanity out of the bathroom.


15. GET THE BAND AIDS! GET THE BAND AIDS! GET THE BAND AIDS!


16. Attach new 6 inch drain pipe into the sink drain. Note: a professional plumber allows for the inside of the fitting. Note the new 1 inch gap between the jagged end of the shortened pipe and the old p-trap SHOULD INCLUDE the one inch of pipe that would fit into the fitting.


17. Drag the vanity back into the bathroom.


18. Go to Menards and stand in front of the sink repair section. Think to yourself: maybe you've been approaching this wrong. Think: why the hell don't they make flexible—


19. Purchase flexible sink trap repair kit.


20. Install flexible sink trap repair kit.


21. Pull the escutcheon off the wall so you can finally attach the new p-trap to the old drain pipe. Note that your house was built in 1937 and your drain pipe is not threaded. It's also embedded a half inch behind the wall and welded to something you can't see.


22. Stare.


23. You can't just unscrew the horizontal drain pipe, because it's welded as a single unit. After installing a six inch 9 inch pipe extension to a flexible p-trap repair unit to the old p-trap (thus creating an loosely defined w-trap) leaving a one inch gap from the end of the flexible repair kit to the existing drain pipe sticking out of your wall.


24. Beat. Head. Against. Sink.


25. Go to Menards. Buy a rubber coupling. Work it on between the two pipes and voila! You have drain.


26. Turn on the water.


27. Check every section to find out why the water is not draining. Everything is perfect.


28. Beat. Head. Against. Sink.


29. Drag the vanity back into the dining room.


30. Call Garrity plumbing. Your son will let him in while you're at school.


31. Come home to see your gorgeous vanity installed with what, even from a distance, you can see is perfect and sanguine grace. Underneath the sink, a gleaming chrome p-trap falls gracefully from the drain in the sink and disappears through a new escutcheon into the wall.


32. On the dining room table is your self-installed w-trap lying on top of your bill ($532.00) and a note from Garrity in the margin: "Nice try."