My Plumber, My Hero

You know about our ceiling... we are still looking up into the rafters, but we have a plan in place, and the plan is good. We know how we are going to go about insulating and putting the room back together. The electrician is going to start next week with lighting, a ceiling fan, and as a bonus, he will be taking care of some other electrical wants we've had on our list (with the ceiling open, it will be easier for him to get into the rooms that need work.

And as must be typical in these old houses... we've been sort of mentally making lists for the next project. It's exhausting. Sometimes I think it would be helpful if one or both of us really enjoyed this handy house type of work. It's unfortunate that we both look at it as such a chore, though we've improved. There is the pride of having done the job ourselves, but working up to doing the job can be oh-so-painful.

So the "next" item on the list... we've been pretty sure... had something to do with the water supply to our kitchen. Our faucet was down to a dribble and we were envisioning old crusty pipes that were simply too full of stuff to let the water through. I was imagining an enormous job that would take us days and have us doing dishes in the bath tub. Actually, the water pressure has been poor enough I've been known to wash a dish or two in the bath tub.

This morning I watching the water dribble from the faucet and I thought to myself, "I wonder if it could be something as simple as a valve not all the way open." I flipped open the cabinet doors and turned the valve to the hot water. No such luck; it seemed to be open all the way. When I turned the faucet back on, however, the dribble had been reduced to drip. Man was I kicking myself. All I had done was turn the shut-off valve from open, to shut, to open again and now I had no water!?!?

I did not want to mess with plumbing today.

I did not want to get dirty and make a dozen trips to the hardware store and end up tearing out my cabinets and putting new holes in the floors in order to do what I was imagining would be a complete re-piping of the kitchen.

So I apologized to hubby for completely eliminating our kitchen water supply and walked away. "I'll haul the dishes to the tub to wash later," I said. "I'll suffer the consequences of my actions, I just don't want to think about it or attempt to do anything about it right now."

Hubby, however, had no such patience. Before I knew it he was taking apart the kitchen sink. Thank goodness, he didn't have to go to far to discover that we did, indeed, have water pressure. Apparently it was the faucet itself that was clogging up the works, though we weren't able to entirely figure out how. The faucet is fairly new. I installed it myself shortly after we moved in. I'm going to chalk it up to the fact that we had purchased the lowest end, cheapest faucet we could find. Something broke inside or got lodged wrong to clog it or who knows what. (And no, it wasn't the aerator... I've checked and cleaned that a good half-dozen times.)

We bought higher end, this round, and by golly.... we have a strong current of water now flowing out of our new kitchen faucet. The best part of all is that hubby was able to complete the whole exchange in under two hours. He disassembled, reaseembled and we had the water back on with no leaks the first time!

Hubby rocks. He's my plumber. He's my hero.