Why hire a plumber when you have Handy Woman?!

From the series: Life on Dog Hill

For those of you wondering where I’ve been for the last couple of months, let me just say that I’ve been very productive (uh, that’s not reproductive so no worries there). For starters, I attended my 30-year high school reunion and hung out with lots of faces from the past. Then hubby and I took a second honeymoon and spent ten days in Europe visiting Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. Finally there was the three-day North Carolina Writers’ Conference in Asheville followed by the Thanksgiving holiday.

If all that wasn’t enough, most recently I’ve been head over heels involved with a few home fix up projects such as painting and bathroom renovation. It was the bathroom renovation that got my goat and took up twice as much time as expected. The challenge? Reattaching the plumbing… The other challenge? Figuring out why everything leaked!

Has anyone (besides me) noticed how easy it is to take things apart and how hard it is to put them back together again? When I disassembled the plumbing to remove the old bathroom vanity it took no more than five minutes. However, I spent two days (plus two trips to Lowe’s and three trips to Ace Hardware) trying to figure out how to reconnect it all and get it to work without water coming out of every connection.

So, today I made one final plea to the man at the local Ace Hardware store – just short of bringing him home with me, I managed to narrow the problem down to needing a flex pipe. You see, the new sink is in a different position from the old one and I realized that the angle of the dangle is in proportion to the mass of the… you get the idea.

Turned out that I didn’t need flex pipe at all – just a simple gasket that I already had but had forgotten to include in the reassembly. As for the leaks, nothing that a little plumber’s tape, silicon and a few light twists with the wrench can’t handle. Yep, it all works!

I’m feeling mighty proud of myself right now. And to think that Tom wanted us to hire a plumber for this job…

Really.