I notice a strange humming noise when I get into the kitchen that I can't place. I try for a sec to figure it out and poke my head outside to see if it was someone else's noise. Nope. It is mine. I go to the fridge and open the right door. Nothing weird. I open the left door, the freezer, and quickly understand there is a problem as a pint of water comes pouring out onto the ground into the gallon-ish-puddle that I didn't previously notice. Shit. I start poking around at the ice-maker, which is still dribbling water out. It's warm, but the rest of the stuff in the fridge still seems to be frozen. I can't pull the fridge out cause there's a 300-pound kitchen island in the way and I've got 4 people in the house, sleeping. But I have to stop the water! Reluctantly, I slowly drag the heavy-ass island across my beautifully polished hardwood kitchen floors; cursing to myself all the while.
With the island out of the way, I quietly yank the on the fridge to get it pulled out of the custom cabinets that were built around it. Water spilling everywhere as I go. I identify the copper tubing that is surely the water line. Unscrew it from the fridge and watch it dribble at the same rate that the freezer was. All of a sudden, the freezer springs to life and starts chilling things. Surely freezing all the water that's pooled on all the shelves inside the freezer. I stick the end of the copper line in a bucket and run downstairs to find a shutoff valve.
The laundry room is directly beneath the kitchen and there's about three gallons of water beneath where the fridge sits on the floor above. Great. I can't find a valve anywhere, but I find what I think is the water line. It's buried beneath old insulation so I start ripping it apart and digging around to uncover the water line. Brown, discolored water is pouring out of the insulation all over me, all over the floor. My nose, which never really works very well, starts detecting a strange, putrid odor. I look closer at the brown water, which I had first took for being dirty from the age of the house. I was wrong. It's the color of shit, mouse shit, specifically. I look closer at the insulation I'm tearing apart. It's completely saturated with mouse feces and urine... Vile. I throw some gloves on and keep going because I need to find a shutoff. I find nothing.
Frustrated, I head back upstairs to the kitchen. Maybe under the sink? My bucket's filling up and it's now after 6, which is when I was supposed to start work, following my epic bike ride. Under the kitchen sink is a confusing cornucopia of valves and pipes and filters. There's a copper pipe similar to the one I disconnected from the refrigerator but it's pointed in a different direction and doesn't look like it connects to the fridge. The copper tube under the sink is connected to a plastic pipe that heads in two directions. One direction is a valve of sorts with two handles with filters on the other side. The other direction leads to the filtered water spigot at the sink. Make sense? It didn't to me, either. I fiddle this way and that with all four of the valves I can see. Nothing has an impact on the flow of water still filling up my bucket, which is now spitting out water at random times and in random amounts.
Back down to the basement laundry room. The rank smell of decaying biological matter is now overwhelming. There's a window in the laundry room and I decide to open it. It's old so I pull hard and the whole fucking thing came ripping out of its concrete housing. Glass, wood frame, and all. Ugh. I set it down without thinking twice and go back to looking for a shutoff valve. With the contaminated insulation removed, and spread out all over the floor, I trace one end of the copper tube, which I think is the water line, directly under the where the fridge is, but it doesn't go up through the ceiling to the fridge above. Instead, it continues passed, on back toward the bathroom. The other end leads directly to the breaker box. Confounding. Fuck it. I'm done. Backup plan.
Back upstairs, I reroute the water line up and over the fridge; hang a right and head toward the sink. I use a 10-pound dumbbell and some bailing wire to mount the end of the water line to the cabinets directly over the sink. Water now dribbles out of the water line, falls 5 feet to the sink, and safely drains down the sink without destroying my house or making any more mouse poop soup.
With a sufficiently white-trashed kitchen, I'm off for my bike ride.
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