Dear Bullamanka-Pinheads,
As I told you before, my cousins and I have inherited a house
from our grandmother.
The house is 72 years old.
We have not decided what to do with it yet.
My cousin Estelle is living there for the time being.
My cousin Linda wants to make the house sale-able.
She wants to change the things that she thinks would hurt
the selling price.
One problem, she says, is the sink in the upstairs bathroom.
When you turn the water on, the flow of water points directly
into the sink drain.
You could run the water and not get the basin wet at all.
Well, hardly at all.
If you use the sink for shaving or brushing your teeth,
you have to use your hand to redirect the water,
to rinse your spit or hair out of the basin.
Or, you could plug the drain and wait for it to fill.
Which might be quite a while.
And the water would get dirty and leave a residue anyway,
so you would have to fill it again.
I always just used my hand to redirect the water.
Linda says that middle class families want the kind of sink
where the water swirls around the basin before going down
the drain.
My cousin Estelle says that sounds like a toilet.
Estelle would rather keep the old sink the way it is.
Linda says if we spend $500 to replace the sink,
the house will sell for $5,000 more.
Is that really true?
If so, that would be $4,500 profit, or $1,500 for each
of us.
How could that be possible?
Estelle says that the old sink is historic material,
and they don't make sinks like this any more.
She says replacing the sink would damage the historic
integrity of the house.
Is it a plumbing problem if the faucet points straight
at the drain?
Can this be fixed without tearing out the whole sink?
What should we do?
Very truly yours,
Philip McPherson
Toledo, Ohio
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