That Man

Once upon a time we bought a house. It was an old house that had old things in it. Like an old kitchen and old everything. And it hadn't been well-maintained so it was dirty and falling apart. But let's get back to the kitchen, shall we? Okay, so this kitchen was maybe renovated last in about 1960. If I had my way and about forty thousand dollars it would be a much prettier kitchen. But we don't have forty thousand dollars because we just bought a house. Right. Anyway.

So when we bought this house there was a slight drip from the kitchen faucet. Nothing really serious. More pressingly annoying was the fact that the sink was about six inches deep and the faucet was parallel to the bottom of the sink. You couldn't fit anything in there. We moved in at the beginning of September and our dripping was random and not very severe. By the time I got back from my trip to Utah our sink was dripping so much that Nathan had started keeping the two quart juice pitcher underneath it to catch the water. We then repurposed it by sending it through the filtered pitcher in the fridge. It was okay. Just days after I got back from my trip, the drip got worse. And it continued to get worse until it reached a head on October 19. That was the day that the drip turned into a stream and we basically gave up hopes of being able to fix the sink ourselves.

One of the problems with our sink was that it doesn't have a shut-off valve upstairs. It also doesn't have a u-bend upstairs, but that's not quite as serious. The shut-off valves for the water to the kitchen sink are in the basement right over the water heater. And they're so severely corroded that I was told by a plumber that if I did turn them once, I might not get them turned back the other way. Our only option for fixing that sink was to hire someone or turn off the water to the whole house (thereby turning off the heat since we have a forced-air water heating system). Fun. I did have a plumber come over and give me an estimate, but he was talking in the several thousands for that project and various others and I didn't need the other projects done. I needed a new faucet.

The next day I fortified the faucet with a pipe cleaner and a rubber band, which limited the dripping to just a constant drip, and I headed out to Lowe's. I contemplated faucets for about forty-five minutes before deciding to go kind of cheap (since I'm still hoping for that kitchen remodel eventually, it didn't seem worth it to splurge on the faucet now) and then got some caulking, shut-off valves and some flexible pipes.

Lowe's and our fix-it-yourself book estimated the project would take us 1 1/2 to 2 hours just to install the faucet. We were kind of worried that it would get kind of cold in our house during that time. As it turned out, it was actually pretty easy to get the faucet out. Once we realized that the pipes were not standard sized pipes we decided to not bother with the shut-off valves at all and just use the existing old piping. We didn't have much choice there.

The old faucet had never been caulked, so the sink was nasty and filthy. We also discovered that although the sink was a four hole sink, it was originally a much smaller three hole sink. Some of our holes had been expanded and were dangerous and likely to cause tetanus if touched. We didn't touch. Gross. I had the special privilege of cleaning this nastiness without running water. Upon which I reflected with gratitude for the saved up water from the dripping sink.

Nathan did most of the installation work and I did most of the caulking. In the end we ended up installing that faucet in about half an hour. It wasn't hard at all.

So this is our new faucet. It's not exactly what I wanted, but it works nicely and I can fit my big pots into the sink now, which is a real plus for us (me especially). I also don't feel like I'm filling my family with germs from the dirty old faucet and sprayer. That's always nice too. It's the shiniest thing in my kitchen and looks desperately out of place.

Anyway, the point of this story is to tell you that I'm grateful for my husband. He's become quite the do-it-yourselfer that he never was before and now we have a kitchen faucet that doesn't drip and is shiny. What more could a girl ask for?

And, just in case you were wondering. I did give my talk today and the only person I was trying to impress and whose opinion mattered informed me that my talk was a little too "colloquial" for his tastes. Rats. In my defense, he was wrestling the two little hellions we spawned. He might not have heard me. (Except that it probably WAS too colloquial because I can't ever really convey what I really mean anyway no matter how hard I try and then I resort to talking like myself. Oh well.)