Be your own plumber

One day last week I was minding my own business, washing my dishes, when I grabbed my kitchen faucet to turn it to the left and this happened:

Except it didn’t look like that, exactly, because the water was on. Unencumbered by the part of the facet that controls the flow, I suddenly had a firehose in my kitchen. It drenched me. And my dinner. And the wall behind my head.

Not knowing exactly how to install a new faucet myself, I let this project go for about a week, during which time I repeatedly forgot that the damn thing was broken and re-drenched myself. I did it before bed. I did it before work. I did it before a date.

Clearly I needed to Just Fix It Already. Expecting the worst, I picked up a new fixture from Lowes and went to work.

It was a dirty job, yes, but not as bad as I had feared. The one tricky part was that of the two bolts holding the last faucet to the sink, one had completely corroded and couldn’t be turned. I struggled with it for about 20 minutes, hopelessly whacking at it with a hammer, before I remembered that I owned the bad boy pictured above. I snuck that blade right under the faceplate and up against the offending bolt, and the sink came loose in 30 seconds. BAM. Power tools are the best. Every lady should own a bunch.

From there on in the faucet swap was smooth as can be. I installed the new bolts, connected the hot and cold lines (the right way this time; my last faucet was connected backwards), hooked up the wand attachment, and we were golden.

The project also gave me the inspiration to take care of one of the few really cluttered areas left in the house: the storage under the sink:

Cringe. How about this instead:

That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.