Holy Crap I Fixed a Leaking Faucet

At the risk of OK Boomer-ing myself (an alarmingly frequent occurrence these days), I’ve always been down on myself for not being a handy guy. Few skill sets are more useful and yet, the relative infrequency with which I have had to deal with maintenance issues in my own living space (and the high probability that when I have, I’ve typically pushed the task onto my landlord as a matter of principle) means that all the stuff my dad taught me about fixing shit yourself has been long forgotten by the time it comes up. (The same extends to cars. If I ever have to change a tire, I hope my wife is around because I’d be screwed.)

But now, since I co-own the place, anything that needs to be fixed is my responsibility. I must find way to fix the thing, even if that means calling a guy and paying said guy through the nose to do something I could have done myself with sufficient know-how. I’m not saying this to denigrate the home repair industry – when you call someone out to your house to fix something, you are acknowledging that the task at hand is beyond your skill, and therefore also acknowledging that you have no leverage in the given situation – rather, I’m So when I woke up this morning to find the mat next to the kitchen sink sopping wet, and then find a puddle of water underneath said sink, my immediate emotional response was one of fear and self-loathing.

The self-loathing comes from the aforementioned lack of handiness. If you ranked household repairs by the ease with which you can do the repair yourself, fixing a leaking kitchen sink would be near the top of any such list. And yet, once I saw the force of the problem I knew there was no way to let this leak go unresolved. This realization led to fear. Either I must risk failure (potentially grievous failure, at that) in order to fix the leak myself, or I must call a guy to come out at some point today. In doing so, I would not only guarantee I’ll have to pony up a decent chunk of change, I would also make myself beholden to the guy’s schedule and thus put my ability to honor my therapy appointment this afternoon at grave risk.

The first task was to clean up the puddle. Simple enough, even if I accelerated the planet’s path toward demise with excessive paper towel usage. The second task is to find the source of the leak, and see if anything is visibly damaged or loose. This requires turning on the faucet and reintroducing water into the fragile ecosystem that exists under the cabinet, but it must be done. Can’t make an omelet without getting water in your cabinets, or however the saying goes. After turning on the faucet, water is clearly coming down into the cabinet, but there’s a whole works of small pipes back there that the water is dripping down, and fuck me if I know which one is which, or if I can tell which pipe is the culprit.

Whatever, time to move on to the third task, which is crawling into the cabinet to look at the pipes closer up. Yep, these are still some pipes we got back here, no doubt about it. I still have no idea which pipes do what, and I still don’t see any obvious culprits. Nevertheless, I escalate the process to the fourth task and grab wrench so I can grasp meaninglessly at a bunch of pipes, tighten them all up a tiny bit, and hope that does the trick. To my shock and horror, it does not.

Since I am savvy enough to realize that this process is a flow chart, I return to the second task, albeit weighted down with the despair of knowing that soon, I will have exhausted all the possibilities I’m aware of. Soon, I will have to check the internet to see if I can find any information pertinent to my circumstances, and if that proves fruitless I will surely need to call a plumber. Can I ascertain the source of the leak? Again, I see water coming down a bunch of pipes, but I can’t seem to find which pipe is responsible.

Or can I? Once I slow down the flow of the faucet, it sure seems like the water is trickling down the side of this hose, which connects directly to the spigot. Our faucet is one of those ones where you can pull on the spigot to detach it from the fixture; had I not already noticed that there seemed to be water coming out of the fixture at the point where the hose connects? I had thought that couldn’t be a big deal; after all, it was only churning out a couple of drips here and there, but perhaps if I pull out the spigot and examine the connection…

Well wouldn’t you know, this leak I already knew about is 100% trickling down to the cabinet. Using only the brute torque of my bare, grown-ass man hands, I secure the hose connector back into the nozzle. I test the faucet, bracing myself with cautious optimism – no water is coming out! What about in the cabinet? Nothing is dripping down there, either! Holy fucking shit, I did it! I fixed a leaking faucet all by myself!

Now that I have installed myself as D.I.Y. potentate, I shall now command all routine maintenance tasks with absolute authority. My power to fix anything shall know no bounds, unless it involves wiring. Fuck that, that shit is dangerous. I’m calling an electrician.