Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop To Drink

It's possible to plumb without swearing an oath, I suppose, but I've never been able to do it. Swearing and plumbing just seem to go hand-in-hand, and if you want to know how I spent my pleasant evening at home, well, let's just say that I spent it with a wrench and it's possible that an impolite word or two may have escaped my lips.

Not that I'm a lousy plumber, mind you - I'm way beyond lousy. But a fella ought to be at least a little handy around the house, don't you think? When something minor like a kitchen faucet starts exploding water all over the floors, cabinets and counters he ought to be able to look the situation over and come up with a plan of repair. That's the way I look at it, anyways, and so when some minor disaster strikes the house I'm always game to see what I can do. And true to form I always start each new home repair project the same way by making the same mistake.

"Looks easy," I say.

And this one did look easy. All that was needed was a new hose to connect the faucet to the spray nozzle. Sheesh, turn a couple of nuts, pull the old hose out and put the new one in. Piece of cake, I thought, and it would have been had it not been for the first rule of home plumbing projects.

Rule No. 1.: The part needing repair will always be in the darkest, most cramped and inaccessible spot possible.

Which brings me to the part about swearing oaths.

There I was, lying on my back under the kitchen sink, flashlight in my teeth, with my right arm stretched around the garbage disposal and under the tubes for the dishwasher and my left arm doubled back under my shoulder so I could reach behind the hot and cold water lines and try to get a wrench on the fitting holding the hose to the faucet, and I tell you I wanted to be good but somehow the oaths just started coming.

"If I can just get this wrench on there and turn it a little. Eeuuggghhhh! Yeah, that's it. Got it! Now just hold on there and turn it..."

(CLUNK!)

"Ow! God #@%& it!!! %$##ing wrench!!! That god#$%# son of a &%#$*! How am I supposed to get it when it's way the #%$& up there!?"

"Maybe you should call a plumber."

(Did I mention I had a kibbitzer)

"We don't need a plumber."

(Why do people make comments like that anyways? Don't they know how insulting it is. That's like saying "Why don't you ask for directions?" Geez, no man worth his salt is ever going to take something like that laying down. )

" It's simple. All I need to do is get this fitting loose and the hose will pop right off ."

(In other words, go away and leave me alone. I don't care if I gotta break every knuckle in my hand, we ain't gonna call a plumber. Not after a comment like that)

"Okay, let's try again. Where's that wrench? Oh there it is, under my ribcage. Okay, right arm around the garbage disposal and under the dishwasher tubes, left hand behind the pipes, now just get the wrench around the fitting and..."

(CLANK! CLUNK! CLING!)

"Oooowwww! GOD $#%& IT! "

"Are you sure we don't need a plumber?"

"No, I told ya'. We don't need a plumber."

(Hmmm, there's gotta be another way to do this. Maybe if I took the sink out and knocked out the front wall I could get some room to work in)

"I just need a smaller wrench or something. I can fix this, okay?"

And so, to make a long story short, after much knuckle scraping and oath swearing I finally got the fitting off and the hose pulled out. Now all I had to do was put the new hose in and before you know it the old faucet would be good as new. Which brings me to the 2nd rule of home plumbing repair.

Rule No. 2: 95% of any home plumbing repair is being able to find the right parts.

This is true of any repair project, of course, but where plumbing repair differs from say car repair is that when you need a part for your car you just call up the car parts guy and tell him "I need a conbabulator for a 74 Pinto" and if he's got it, you're all set. With plumbing, however, that's a lot harder to do. Don't believe me, ok quick - tell me the make and model number of your kitchen faucet? Aha, that's what I thought, and unless you've got it written down or make a habit of studying your pipes and fittings, you're probably not gonna know anything beyond "Um, I think it's a Moen, but I don't know the model number."

Luckily, the plumbing industry is aware of this and that's why hardware stores across America stock these universal type things which are supposed to work with any make and model of plumbing apparatus ever manufactured and sold (except for your make and model, of course). I made a quick trip to the hardware store over my lunch break and soon I was all fixed up with just the right part - a universal kitchen faucet spray hose kit with instructions and adaptors included. Man, this was going to be easy.

First thing to do is look at the instructions. Instruction 1 looked pretty good, instruction 2 - I can do that, instruction 3 - "What the hell are they talking about. What parts 1 and 4? That picture doesn't look like what's in the kit." So I decided to skip the rest of the instructions and just get to the job at hand. After all, you hook one end up to the faucet and the other to the spray head, turn and the water and you're set to go. You don't need instructions for that.

And so that's just what I did. I hooked up the one end to the faucet (after much knuckle scraping and oath swearing) and the other end to the spray head, opened the valves and then just stood back and enjoyed the shower of water that came shooting out from both ends of my newly installed home plumbing repair. Man, It was great. Under the sink you had jets of water scrubbing the cabinet floor clean and above the sink you had great geysers shooting high into the air and raining drops all over the counters and floors. I tell you it was like having the Trevi Fountain right there in the middle of the kitchen.

But I knew it wasn't right so it was back to the drawing board. I shut the valves off and then I remembered

"Adaptors!"

Oh yeah, the adaptors, I was wondering what they were for. I looked back over the instructions and still couldn't make heads or tails of 'em, so I decided to just started playing with the different combinations. This with that, that with this, washer here, washer there, and though I never did figure out how they were intended to work I did find combinations that were close enough, so I decided to just hook 'em up and if they didn't work I'd just force 'em to work. I connected this adaptor to the faucet, that one to the spray head, turned the valves and....

It worked.

What do you know, I fixed it. My knuckles were scraped raw, I had cuts and bruises all up and down my arms, my clothes were soaking wet, and the floors, cabinets and counters were all drenched with water, but how about that - I fixed it.

Then I gathered my tools and got some towels to soak up the water, and as I stood there basking in the glow of my accomplishment a smile of satisfaction shot across my face, an inner smile that only comes when you have given your all to a great cause and walked away victorious. I felt tested and proud, battered but not broken, and deeply moved as I quietly thought to myself

"Next time, I'm calling a plumber."