Tales from the DIY Diary: Part 3
Posted by Robyn Lee in Family on Thursday, August 19, 2010 8:30 AM
Here is the final step for fixing your leaky faucet. If you haven’t already, read step one and step two and learn what not to do when tackling home projects.
Step three: Take the shiny exciting new faucet out of the box and install it. How hard could it be? This is the fun part!
Mom declares that she is going home because we should be able to take it from here.
30 seconds after mom leaves: “Mom I screwed on one of the parts wrong and now I can’t get it off!”
60 seconds after mom leaves ... Mom returns.
With lots of direction from mom, my cousin Colleen and I put the faucet on and replaced the water hoses. Everything seemed to be on correctly so we turned on the water valves to test out our fine work.
“Water is coming out of the faucet. Yay! Oh wait, water is gushing out of the cold water valve. Shut it off!”
World Wide Web Tip: Work during business hours of your local hardware store because you will inevitably forget something and have to go there twice. Author’s comment: I thought, no way. I won’t need to go back. Yeah, I needed to go back. Listen to the professionals ladies.
So, Colleen and I head over to the local hardware store (again) to pick up another water hose.
Overheard in aisle 6:
Colleen: “Do you think we need that valve thing to keep the water from shooting all over the kitchen?”
Me: “No, we are just replacing the hose.”
Colleen: “Remember when we took off the sink in the bathroom without that water-stopper bolt thing and we had to shut off the water in the whole house?”
Me: (pause) Oooh yeah. That wasn’t good. We better buy the water-stopper bolt thingy ... just in case.”
So we drove home with our new hose and a water-stopping bolt thing. I decided to watch the installation video one more time before I tried to replace the hose.
YouTube professionals’ hoses didn’t look like mine. When I tried to unscrew the bolt thingy I thought that the hose would come right off (well, it did in the YouTube video), but nothing happened. It stayed right in its place.
At this point my Helen Reddy theme song was fading out and I did what any independent woman would do ... (yes, you guessed it!) I balled my eyes out and felt miserable for wasting my entire day on failing to install a faucet.
Step three: Not finished. Time in YouTube video: 20 minutes. Time in real life: 4 hours ... and counting.
With a tear-streaked face I went over to dinner at my mom’s house. I felt tired and totally defeated by the DIY monster. What was I going to do without water in the kitchen?
When I got to the table I was surprised to see that my sister Marcia, her husband Nacho and their kids were there for dinner. I dramatically retold them my woes. Marcia graciously suggested that Nacho go over and take a look at the hoses.
On our walk over to my house I did my best to explain the problem. Nacho took one look under the sink, unscrewed the hoses and pulled it right out.
(Ooooh, you have to yank it out? I thought it would just do that itself).
He installed the new hose and the sink was working in less than five minutes!
Final part of step three: Finished (Weeeeeeeee!) Time in youtube video: 2 minutes. Time in real life (for handy brother in law): 2 minutes.
I started off singing I am woman hear me roar and ended feeling very humbled, but very grateful to such a generous family.
Does your family live close by? Do they help you with do it yourself projects? What was the most successful family project that you’ve worked on?
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