Handy-woman nightmare

Friday, May 4th, started out like any other day. I was up before dawn to drink my coffee, do my run and get ready to attack what turned out to be a great College Bowl with my junior high leadership team. The students had a blast, the teachers even enjoyed themselves and I felt like another accomplishment was hard fought and won!

The afternoon; however, didn’t go quite as smoothly. I had bathrooms to clean and that was uneventful…little boys don’t aim well so there was more than the standard amount of gunk around the kids bathroom toilet but, otherwise, cleaning was cathartic and motivated me to do some other little things that had been bugging me. That’s when all Hades broke loose.

I decided to fix the kids shower faucet.

The single lever was loose and hard to adjust so I thought I would take it apart to see how it ticked…I am pretty handy and have reverse engineered my way around many household items in successful attempts to correct issues, but plumbing and electricity are new realms for me. Hidden parts are an irritation and plumbing has them left and right!There were two fatal errors: 1) I had not yet shut off the water supply to the house and 2) I didn’t know what the hidden parts were or where they went because I had successfully shot them out of the inside when said water launched them across the shower stall. UGH!

Before I could get outside and shut off the water, the bathroom floor had become a lake that required 7 clean towels to absorb. Then came the daunting task of trying to fix the problem before my husband came home and laughed his skinny little butt off. After finding the parts, I figured out where the two little rubber thingies fit and replaced them, thankful there were two to be found, but I still had this spring that was also in the bathtub that had no apparent home. About an hour later, after taking apart the shower faucet in the adult bathroom (water off at this point), I determined the spring was from a toy the kids had dismantled while in the tub (love them and their spare parts!) so I started to put the handle back on the brass ring sticking out of the wall. The outer ring for the lever was firmly threaded onto the ring and unable to screw on any further but now the lever had no tension, flopped all over the place, and when I turned the water back on it just ran out of the spigot unabated. There was a lot of and and my kids, who were very supportive at first, had high tailed it outside…deserters! My husband had come home, but had been warned by the kids to, “Just stay outside with us, Dad.”

The saga continued but eventually, about 7:00 that night, I had reverse engineered my way to success, a shower, utter relief and a perfectly chilled Stone IPA.

Let it be known that once you take a faucet apart to see all of the hidden pieces, there is no going back unless you want to forego a shower while enduring your husband’s giggles.

To being your own handy-woman!

Stacy