A couple of weeks ago, our kitchen sink developed a leak near the trap. I fixed it by tightening a couple of the little twisty things on the pipes that look like they’re meant to be tightened with bare hands.
Or so I thought. The leak was still there a few days later. This time, I really tightened those little things with my bare hands, and put a paper towel under the trap to catch any water that might leak.
It caught some water. So my wife put a little dish under the leak and we tried to ignore it.
Today, we could ignore it no further. I disconnected the little bendy thing, and took it to the hardware store. Trip One: Some disaffected employee told me to get a replacement washer, and handed me the wrong one. I caught the error, and picked up the right one. Two of ’em, just to be safe. I didn’t want to have to come back.
Trip Two: I had to go back because the leak wasn’t in the old washer, the bendy trap thing had a crack in it that I’d only just noticed. So I bought a replacement one.
Trip Three: I returned the replacement trap thingy because one of the connectors was the wrong size. So, this time I find an employee, and ask him, “Is there a way to fix or replace this part?” He goes straight to the bin where they have that exact item…
…except when we tried to connect the end of the new part to its mate on my broken part, the threads wouldn’t mesh. My part was using some non-standard threading. So I had to replace the mate to the broken part at home. That required buying a hack saw, 10″ of new pipe, the pipe-glue stuff, a connector, and the replacement part assembly.
Lillian suggested I just hire a plumber, rather than saw through our plumbing myself. Silly girl! But I wondered if another hardware store might have a compatible replacement part, and that would be so much easier.
Trip Four: The other hardware store didn’t have any non-standard threaded trap things either.
So I returned home, did my sawing, gluing and screwing and so far, the fix is holding. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
Who We Were Then
- David
- Lillian
- Maddie (3 years old)
- Aaron (1 years old)