Your kitchen handles a quiet weeknight fine, but a summer cookout or graduation party is a different test. Across Ann Arbor, Saline, and Chelsea, hosting concentrates pot-filling, dishwashing, and disposal use all at once, exposing restrictions that daily use hides. Here are the kitchen plumbing checks to knock out two to three weeks before guests arrive.

Garbage disposal acting up? Across Ann Arbor, Saline, and Chelsea, the region's hard well water and warm Michigan summers gang up on disposals to create odors, clogs, and jams faster than average. Here are the easy fixes you can do yourself, plus the signs it's time to call a pro.