mrs. fix it, part 1

so today . . . i had an "if you give a mouse a cookie" evening...

"if you give a mouse a cookie," is a children's book that illustrates how one thing leads to another. which leads to another. and another. and that's what happened to me this evening. it all started with cleaning my kitchen sink...

when we moved into our new house, i determined that i was going to keep it sparkly clean and shiny. this is a bigger challenge for me than you might think. we have two dogs and lots of stuff. this means muddy puppy feet walking on our floors, pet hair taking up residence wherever it can find an unguarded space, and stuff that doesn't really have a place of it's own...which means that it ends up on the dining room table... or the kitchen counter... or the bedroom chair... well, you get the idea. and since i have a regular job, i don't have lots of time to dedicate to keeping up with it all. so sometimes my house threatens to eat me.

but when we moved, i determined that was not going to happen any more! the first step was buying a house that would be easy to maintain, which meant wood flooring instead of carpets. which we did. the second step was not to move all of the stuff. which we didn't. i donated a ton of stuff to charity and filled a small dumpster with the things i was pretty sure no one else would want. the third step was to find a place for everything in the new house--if it didn't have a place, i was going to get rid of it--that way everything could be put away. which i mostly did, but i admit there are still a few things... and the last step was figuring out some sort of system for cleaning. because if i don't have a system, nothing gets done. it doesn't always get done even when i have a system, but at least it has a chance... so i got a microfiber duster, two roombas, a spin mop, and decided i was ready...

...and then i went back to work. and everything house related sort of started falling apart. i managed to keep my head above water, but just barely. so of course i started looking for solutions (that's where the microfiber duster and the spin mop came in.) i made lists. i downloaded apps on my ipad. i cruised the internet. and one day, while cruising the internet, i found a site that said keeping your house neat and orderly all starts with cleaning your kitchen sink. well, i wanted my house to be neat and orderly, but the method of cleaning the kitchen sink sounded very involved! and that's not all--once it was cleaned, you were supposed to keep it clean and shiny every single day! and you know how i am about doing anything every single day. so i chose to ignore this particular site.

which i did. until today. because today i was home all afternoon, and so i decided to put the christmas dishes away. but that meant i had to wash a couple of them, and that put me in close proximity to the sink, which made me start thinking about having a clean sink, and a clean house, and the next thing i knew, i was filling the small sink with hot, bleachy water...

i filled the small sink with hot bleachy water, because i wasn't really sure how this was going to turn out. and our big sink is big! and deep! which means it takes a lot of water to fill it up. so i decided to start with the small sink. i let it soak for an hour. then i followed the rest of the directions for a sparkly clean and shiny sink. and then i moved on to the faucets. and as i was working on the faucets, i realized that they were loose. and the soap dispenser didn't work. so i fixed the soap dispenser (i think,) and scrubbed the faucets, and dried and shined everything up, but those faucets were still loose. and now they were bothering me, because my small sink looked so good!

i thought there had to be a way to tighten them, so i took everything out from under the sink. and put it on the counter. now my previously clean counters were full of stuff, but it was nice and clean under the sink. i flopped down onto the kitchen floor and squiggled my way into the empty cabinet. it was dark in there. and i didn't have a light. so i squiggled back out and got a clip-on flashlight and dove back under the sink.

there is a lot of flexible tubing under my sink. and the sink is extra deep. and there is also a giant garbage disposal under there, which made it hard to move around. which is why i was under the sink instead of rollie. but i knew i was going to need help. i couldn't tighten whatever had to be tightened without someone holding the faucets steady. so i yelled for rollie, and he came to see what i needed. but all he could see were my feet and legs--the rest of me was buried under the sink...

"i need help!" i said. although i'm pretty sure those words weren't necessary. i'm pretty sure that it was fairly clear that i needed help. "what do you want me to do?" he asked. "just hold the faucet still while i try to tighten it up." this sounds simple enough, but over the course of the next half hour, rollie retrieved tools from the garage for me to use, he tried not to step on the part of me that was hanging out of the cabinet, and he finally handed me my phone so i could take pictures of what i was dealing with. because just like everything else that the previous homeowner decided to do himself, these faucets had not been installed exactly according to the directions...

i had rollie pull me out of the abyss, and i announced, "i'm going to home depot. i'm sure i need parts." rollie said, "let's just buy a new faucet. we can have manuel install it." but i had looked fancy kitchen faucets up online--i knew how expensive they were. "no," i said, "i think we can fix it." so i grabbed my phone with the photos i had taken, and the checkbook, and went to home depot.

home depot was no help at all. "yep," steve said, (i think every male employee at home depot is named steve. it may even be a job requirement, because every time i go there for help, the guy's name tag says steve!) "it looks like you need some parts to fix that. we don't sell those parts." of course they don't. "if you know the manufacturer, you might be able to get parts online." thanks, steve, thanks a lot...

i was not ready to give up. i came home and started looking online for my faucets, and miraculously, without a manufacturer or model number, i found them! and then i found installation instructions!! yessss!!! i could see by the installation instructions how to tighten one of the faucet pieces. so i yelled for rollie and stuffed myself back under the sink. i figured out a way to prop my flashlight up so that i could use both hands, and prepared to tighten. but there was a problem. of course. the fitting wouldn't budge.

this is where the expertise of a guy with a fully stocked workbench comes in handy :) "it's stuck," i said. "i can't move it." "wait a minute," rollie said, "i'll be right back." and he disappeared. and i waited. twisted like a pretzel under the sink. but it was worth it, because when he came back, he handed me an aerosol can of something guaranteed to unstick stuff. so i sprayed it (and hoped it wouldn't drip on my face,) and waited. and it worked! i was finally able to tighten the fitting so that one more piece of our faucet was tight. but as i emerged from under the sink, i realized that my shirt and hair were wet. this is never a good thing when you are working under a sink. i felt the floor of the cabinet, and sure enough, there was a good sized puddle. "uh oh," i said to rollie, "i think something is wrong..."

did i mention how many pipes and flexible tubing and stuff were under the sink? and did i mention how i just barely fit under there?? and did i mention that it was impossible to maneuver without bumping into something??? well, apparently in all my squiggling about, i had bumped the drain pipe in the big sink and dislodged the connection. i was now really, really glad that i hadn't filled that sink up with water and bleach to soak! i ran to get towels while rollie reconnected the pipes. and then he went to bed. i think he had reached his "help julie with whatever impossible project she has decided to tackle" limit for the day.

did i mention that rollie gets a little uneasy when i get into "i can fix it!" mode? just because one time i tried to fix the washing machine with a screwdriver without disconnecting it... sheesh.

anyway, now there was only one piece left. this one was going to be a challenge. this was the one that steve at home depot said needed a part that they didn't have. but i had sort of reached my plumbing "fix it" limit for the day since rollie had gone to bed, because that meant there was no one to extract me from under the sink if i decided to go back in...

...which brought me back to cleaning my sink. because i had only done the smaller one earlier, just to see how it turned out. but now that all but one of my faucet components were tightened, i decided to clean the other sink. so i filled it with hot, bleachy water, and waited for an hour, and shined it up, and now it looks beautiful!

of course, now the countertops are filled with all the stuff from under the sink, but i can fix that tomorrow. tomorrow i am going to figure out how to tighten that last faucet component...

...or drown trying!