My new blog, 7/4/14

My wife is a great apologist for blogging. It's not that she is a great blogger herself; the conversation runs to the old, 'do as I say not as I do' routine. She is good however at seeing and knowing value, that is, return for effort put forth. Plumbing-geek.com, the repository of my know-how and the place so many have come to and found the help and answers they needed was my wife's brainchild.

I supplied the name. About twenty minutes into brainstorming possible names for the new website, checking availability as we went, I came up with Plumbing Geek. It seemed so obvious, plumbing on the internet. We Googled it and the net echoed like a large empty room. We could have had .com, .net, dot whatever. We could have had it with or without the hyphen, but we thought the double G was more readily understood with each G as part of a separate word. That was back in 2010 when all things plumbing had, for the most part, not given more than a nod to the twenty-first century.

Of all the internet projects and entities we have initiated plumbing-geek.com is the one that has grown wings and soared. Indeed there has been great return for effort and the website more than pays for itself. Through plumbing-geek I have been able to profit while helping people and what could be better than that! I got an email from a woman in England who said her pink loo was out of order. It is a 1929 Crane Ipswich and no one there was prepared to work on it. After lots of emails between her and myself, plus myself and her plumber, we put it right. I selected and sent parts for it and her plumber installed them as per my instruction. To date I have talked to folks all over the country about their remodel and restoration projects; many of them send their valves to me. I restore them to full function, sometimes have them re-plated, and send them back. I have answered many emails about general plumbing questions and have even taken some phone calls.

I look foreword to a day when plumbing-geek will be my full time occupation. Even now a good percentage of my time plumbing is working in my shop on valves and such that come via USPS, FedEx, and UPS. I am trying to find time to restore my own collection of vintage plumbing fixtures so that I might get them posted on the websites pages as available and ready to install. The website wants many more pages to be written and now there is this blog to see to.

I was wondering if I would be able to keep a blog up and have something interesting to say. After some thought though I realized that here is a place for me to post and talk about the photos I am always taking with my iPhone and boring my friends with. It isn't just fine old plumbing fixtures that I see and work on, as if that isn't enough, it's the interior and exterior architecture I am constantly exposed to in my work. Tile, fire places, hardwoods, cabinetry, windows and doors, even embossed tin ceilings and Victorian spooled interior arches. If I am not too busy and don't procrastinate, I will be sharing it all here.

Thanks for looking!

-Brian, the plumbing geek.