The sore sorer’s apprentice
Saturday March 21st 2015, 9:57 pm
Filed under: Family,Life

(Don’t take that subject line too seriously, I just couldn’t resist a pun like that.)

I’m smaller, I fit better under there–let me give it a try.

Okay, that makes it sound like I volunteered a lot more enthusiastically than I did. It was definitely not going to be comfortable with the lip below the counter digging into the small of my back but the job needed doing and I had nothing to complain about vs what it would be like for him. We put a folded towel over that edge down there.

My hands aren’t strong, though, and as I tried to tighten the nut on the right bolt as best I could I dropped it again and again: my arms were simply too short. The nuts had not only come loose, the big brass washers to either side had actually fallen out. How, I don’t know. This was a new faucet as of December.

I gave it my best.

Being that tall and squeezing under that bathroom sink in that space was definitely a challenge–but he did it.

When he got all done I suddenly noticed that the faucet above was off. Like, WAY off. I tried to describe it for him, wedged under there, and he, realizing it meant undoing both sides, kind of pleaded for it to look good enough. A half to three quarter inches skewed to on side, that doesn’t sound like a lot, right?

Uh… I described it.

He knew. He lessened his grip on the idea of finally being done: So we really do need to undo and start over?

I’m afraid so.

I knew we should have been looking at it from top and bottom, says he.

(I didn’t, even if it was obvious in the aftermath, but I do now. If it’s break-the-sale bad if the house were on the market which it emphatically is not, the house I mean, then you need to fix it.)

This time he simply stayed crammed with his head at a painful angle behind the U-tube till it was done rather than asking me to spell him. He tightened up the last of it far faster than I ever could have done. Hopefully there will be no more leaks, hopefully the faucet will stay solidly in place now. My hero! I exclaimed as he stumbled out and to his feet, and I meant it.

I don’t feel like a hero.

My hero, I repeated emphatically. Given how strong his big hands are, having his being the ones holding that wrench this time means we won’t have to do this again. Hopefully.


2 Comments so far
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Congratulations on a job successfully completed.

Comment by RobinM 03.23.15 @ 5:03 am

I need to replace the faucet on the very small vanity in the bathroom…I know what this feels like!

Comment by Kathy in San Jose 03.24.15 @ 10:21 pm



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