Handy-Woman: Replacing The Faucet

As with any home, especially older ones, there's always something the previous owners did that isn't liked by the current owners.  In our case, it's the bathrooms and the kitchen. They're functional, so we aren't in any hurry to do anything, but we are hoping to re-do the hall bathroom little by little this year.

The hall bath had one of those pull-on, push-off faucets. This one was real stiff so the kids usually had to use all their strength to try and pull it on. When they were younger, their Dad and I had to do it for them. Eventually, all that pulling cracked the seal under the faucet and broke the clamp underneath the sink that holds the faucet tight against the sink. Children that like to use the sink as a bathtub for toys proved no match for a cracked seal and broken clamp and a leak developed. Now here's my chance to replace the faucet with something prettier and easier for little hands to turn off and on.

 Here's the old sink. I never did like those kinds of faucets, did you? After shutting off the water and struggling with rusted bolts and getting beaned in the head with a falling clamp, I finally got the old faucet out. Dropping in the new faucet was nice and easy, clamped it in, then started to attach the old water supply line only to discover it's about 2 inches too short, because the new faucet has a shorter pipe compared to the old one. The very basic hardware store inside the General Store down the road from us didn't carry what I needed, so I had to wait 4 days until the next time one of us went into the big town before I could get longer supply lines. 

Now that the water supply line is installed, it's time to connect the drainpipe. Arggggh!!  The new drainpipe is  too short! It barely sits inside the old J-bend pipe. If you turn on the water it slightly bubbles out. Can't have that. So Andrew goes to the big hardware store after work and finds a J-bend with a higher inlet, and as soon as he comes home, I snatch it out of his hands so I can install it. Ugh, the opening is too big!! Perfect higher inlet, but too big!! Oh the joys of trying to make new parts fit on old parts!!  Enough is enough! I grab the old J-bend and bring it to the small hardware store in the small town and find an extension pipe that will fit perfectly, but I might have to cut it down a little bit... It works!!  *happy dance*

Here's the pretty new faucet, all shiny and easy to turn off and on.

Leak-free, too!!  

I love that the kids are seeing Mama do handy-man stuff around the house and that Andrew doesn't mind that I'm doing it, either.  Someday, when they grow up, I hope they'll think they can do it themselves without having to rely on a man to do it for them, and Peter, if he finds a wife that wants to do things, he won't mind letting her!