Don't Try This At Home

I don’t know how you feel about leaky faucets but I don’t like them. I don’t like the drips. They do a mini-rumble out of the faucet nozzle, free fall toward the drain and land with an annoying, room echoing ping. Thought stops, breathing is interrupted, anticipation builds. Life becomes centered on the next falling drop of water.

We had a kitchen faucet that finally decided to give up. We are ‘Kitchen People.’ We spend a lot of time there and the drip cycle was interrupting cooking and meals, making visiting and conversation nearly unbearable. Every pause was filled with the steady sound of a drip, The faucet came with the house and was probably only a few years younger than me. It was one of those with one handle and no washers; I needed to replace the whole thing. I bought a new faucet and waited for a day when everyone was gone. I noticed there was no shut off for the cold water when I was looking at the faucet so I had one of those, too. I figured the whole replacement thing would take about an hour.

It probably would have gone better if I’d realized the main shut-off for the house didn’t work. By the time I found that out I had the cold water connector unscrewed and water was shooting everywhere. I quickly grabbed the new shut-off and tried to force it on the pipe. No go. Too much water. To lessen the pressure I ran around the house and turned on every faucet there was. Still too much. The only thing left was to run upstairs and flush the toilet. That did it. I got the shut on and turned it to close just as the toilet tank filled. I laid in the water under the sink and finished up with the hot water side and mounted the faucet. It worked. And it only took a lot longer than an hour. Sopping up gallons of water off the kitchen floor and from under the sink stretched the job out a whole lot more.

I got dried off and changed just before Pat got home. She noticed the new faucet. She noticed the sparkly clean kitchen floor more. I told her I had extra time that day so I thought I’d do a little around the house. Pat thinks I’m handy, as in Handy Man. It’s an illusion. Some day she’ll probably figure out I’m a guy with a basic knowledge of how a screw driver works. Until then she’s got a new faucet and, for a while, a really clean floor.