Bob Vila, I Ain't
I'm not exactly what you would call handy. In fact, I am to home improvement what Mr. T is to Victoria's Secret. I require an overnight hospital stay if I attempt to remove the rubber band from around a newspaper. (I've almost put my eye out twice.)
My lack of mechanical prowess is known throughout the countryside. The borough that I live in has requested that I apply for a permit, if I attempt to build a sandwich.
My father was the one who was blessed with these skills. He could work on the family automobile and have it running in the morning, repair a broken hay rake on the back of the tractor in the afternoon, install new electrical outlets in the spare room by dusk and then turn around and make a Hungarian Goulash that would make a native Budapestian migrate to our kitchen. And, he'd do it all in one day. (Let's see him write a half hour spec script for “Everybody Loves Raymond.”)
Still, I would love the ability to build or repair something and not have to fill out an insurance claim form. For instance, I tried replacing the float in the toilet tank in the guest bathroom. Without getting into too many details, people who visit us now, and use the guest bathroom, have the unique opportunity to see, first hand, how a kitty litter operates.
Last year, we had a Nor'easter and several shingles were blown off our roof. I replaced them the day before a major snowstorm in March. After the storm, all the shingles I replaced, (using no less than twenty nails in each shingle) were still there. However, all the shingles surrounding them were gone.
I also attempted to install a toilet paper holder in the guest bathroom. Sixteen drill holes in the wall later, I discovered how much easier it was to leave the loose roll of t.p. on the vanity.
My feeble repair attempts became known as “The Curse of The Guest Bathroom.” Stephen King is planning on writing the screenplay.
Now that I've set you up, and have given you some background on my manual dexterity, it is time to tell you of my ultimate challenge.
No one seems to know how a chip in the porcelain, the size of Camden County, got in the guest bathroom sink. My wife denies any knowledge of it. And every time I question the two cats, they point their paws at each other in an accusatory fashion.
So, when my wife said, “We need to replace this sink.” I immediately volunteered for the job. After approximately twenty minutes of my wife laughing uncontrollably, I explained that I needed to break “The Curse Of the Guest Bathroom”, I needed to prove that I could do it and I needed the arm and leg I would have been charged had I hired a plumber. It was just something I had to do. Man pitted against plumbing. Mono Au Mono.
I entered the bathroom wearing a fully loaded tool belt, a hard hat, dark goggles, and holding a large pipe wrench in each hand. Robo Plumber!!!
First, I removed the old sink. This was the sink that originally came with the house. I discovered that builders tend to use the cheapest grade materials when building a house. (The next lower grade sink, in this case, would have been a flowing stream and a rock.)
The cats hid under the bed, as I removed the hardware from the old sink and attempted to put them (the hardware, not the cats) on the new one. Note: It's advisable to remember how the hardware came off, so that after installing the hardware on the new sink, you don't have ten or twelve extra pieces left over.
The sweat began pouring from my forehead as everything I tried to do went wrong. The bathroom began looking like a scene out of The Three Stooges' “A Plumbing We Will Go.” I had thoughts of, after completing the job, turning on the faucet and my neighbor's toilet flushing.
I'm proud to say that, eventually, the sink was installed and hooked up. The hot water came out when the hot water faucet was turned on. The cold water ran when the cold water faucet was activated. This was all accomplished in one afternoon with only two Band-Aids, a change of clothes and thirty-seven expletive deletives. The “curse” had been broken.
Now, weren't we talking about adding on another room?
