Happy belated Valentine's Day! We had fun at work this week making different decorative hearts including this one. I found a wonderful Danish website that is dedicated to all things paper weaving. Papermatrix.dk can get you through every holiday imaginable with their inventive designs.
This weekend I thought I would do an actual home improvement for a change. A while back the water pressure in my kitchen faucet dropped. When I finally had to call the plumber for something else, I asked about this. He said that sometimes debris can shoot up the pipes and sort of clog the faucet. But unfortunately with the cheap faucet I had, there wasn't much he could do. If I had a more expensive faucet he could take it apart clean it out and it would probably take care of the problem. I thought about this for a few weeks. Then on my next visit to Home Depot I perused the faucet section. I found one I like that was one of the "good" brands the plumber had mentioned and I found a reasonably priced one and bought it.
Then it sat in my kitchen for a few months.
This weekend seemed like the perfect weekend to take care of this since it was a holiday weekend. That way if anything went wrong I could pay twice as much to have someone come fix it.
The old faucet. In addition to the low water pressure, the side hose didn't really work anymore either. It would spray but the faucet would still run even though it was supposed to shut off.
The thing that was probably the real motivator was the condition of the cabinet under the sink. I had put the contact paper in when I moved it (8years ago). Time for a good cleaning.
Now, if you are impressed that I installed my own faucet - don't be. It's pretty easy. It comes with great instructions and all the parts you need.
The challenge is taking the old faucet off.
Oy vey!
It is rusted, and stuck, and you have to crawl under the sink in the weirdest position, then try to get the stupid plastic (broken) gaskets off. Meanwhile all of the rust is falling into your eyes and the hoses aren't quite empty even though you turned the water off so they drip on you and then you have to put your head down for a second to rest and you put it right in the puddle of water...
Still the gaskets won't come loose and you can't bang on them because there's no room in there and you are scared to push at things to hard because you don't want to slip and cut your fingers...
Finally, WD40 to the rescue! But you have to spray that twice to get it to work and then you have to let the cabinet air out because you can't breath with the WD40 fumes under there.
But finally - you get the darn thing off. 
It took me over two hours to get the old faucet off and about 15 minutes to put the new one in.
And under the sink? Much better.
As you might have heard we had absolutely frigid weather this weekend. It was unbelievably cold. Today it warmed up and started to snow. It was the kind of snow where we get "real" snowflakes. Sadly my camera is not great at the super close ups - someday I'll have on that is. Here are the best ones:
3 comments:
So cool! How do you get the snowflakes like that???
I don't know - I know it doesn't happen every time it snows. Only special conditions. But since I spotted some of Jacques' black fur a few years ago, I always look. They are so cool, right?
So cool! I have never seen such beautiful ones.
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