A Leaky Tap

Our bathtub tap has been dripping for so long that I dare not say. It started out that you could stop the drip by really tightening the taps ... but that eventually stopped working. I put off the inevitable much longer than I should have. Our cat loved it because he had a nice fresh water source (and our cat is fascinated by drips). It was nice to entertain the cat in such a fashion, but I think that I have heard that in some countries there is actually a fine for not repairing a leaky faucet.

Anyway, I knew I had to take care of this. The drip was coming much faster and it had no where to go but worse.

So ... Saturday morning I asked the guy who is doing my basement renovations if he would mind fixing my tap while he was here. Seemed like an innocent request, right? Here's the timeline of events since then:

Saturday night:

Take apart the tap and discover that things are so badly corroded I should get new taps; I run out and pick those up right away.

Sunday morning (8:30):

The installation begins; only the manifold inside the wall needs to be replaced - everything is so badly corroded that it is impossible to attach the new pipes to the old ones.

This is where the nightmare begins ... running out and getting parts; the parts not working ; then having to stem the water flow to the bathtub taps so we can turn the main water back on; and having to wait until Monday until a more well supplied plumbing store is open. The running back and forth to stores and trying every stop-gap measure along the way took until 3:30.

Monday evening:

He arrives with just what he needs to fix the problems he was having the day before. A time consuming job, as he had to precisely measure and solder things together but this was better than having to cut a hole in the wall behind the tub and get at it from behind. So this was good.

Finally! Everything was ready to attach the new tap system to the manifold in the wall. And ... the new taps were faulty. They not only dripped, it was a steady trickle of water. Once again .. we were back to where we started ... drippy taps. So ...

Tuesday:

He bought a new set of taps and tried them out. And they worked! Tuesday evening we could have a bath! But the hole in the wall still had to be drywalled and the tub surround was off (he wanted to make sure there were no leaks before he sealed everything back up again).

Wednesday:

No leaks! Eureka!! So, he got the wall repaired, the tub surround back on and caulked and sealed everything back up again. All we had to do was to wait 24 hours for the silicone to dry before we could use the shower once again.

Thursday:

Technically, we could have a shower sometime around 10:00 this morning. Good to know.

5 days from the beginning to the end of this little saga. I haven't got my bill yet. That is a frightening prospect. But almost any price is worth it. To know that I would have run into this had I tried it on my own makes me realize how lucky I am that I asked someone I know and trust to take care of this 'small' problem.

The gift in all of this, is the person who did this for me. In a day and age of fly-by-night trades people; or the young and inexperienced; or those who want to take a short cut; or those who want to take advantage of a person .... I have a person I know personally who I feel did the job that my Dad would have done.

My Dad was the type of person who did the job right. He didn't take the shortcuts. He spent whatever time was necessary to fix the problem for good. No band-aids. You get to the bottom of the problem and you do it once.

In all the years that Dad has been gone, Mom has never found anyone that can compare to Dad, when it comes to home repair or renovation (or anything else, for that matter). I think she found his perfection in his work, a frustrating thing to live with at times but she recognized the value of the end result of Dad's work. They don't make men like Dad anymore ...

I've had the blessing of coming upon old pictures of Mom and Dad in this quest for family history. And just the other day, Mom asked if it would be too much trouble to add 'a little something' to the book to honor Dad.

I'm choking up a little bit here, as I write this. We 'lost' Dad 25 years ago when he had a massive heart attack (his body survived, but we lost every other part of him). I can talk about him, honor him, think about him and he is a warm memory. For some reason, this minor home repair gone awry and finding someone who treated the problem in the same way Dad would have ... has me missing him.

Life is funny that way. All is good ... then poof! A small incident triggers 'leaky eyes'.