During this holiday season, our kitchen faucet decided to spring a leak. I don’t know why or how it happened. I can only assume the kitchen sink looked around and thought, “Gee, there aren’t enough things wrong with the house right now. What can I do to change that?”
Leaky pipes in the middle of the holidays seems like a perfect metaphor for this entire year. Especially since it wasn’t just a normal leak. You see, most faucets would have the common decency to simply drip right into the sink where the water could go harmlessly down the drain.
Not our faucet.
Our faucet decided to drip down a pipe situated in the cabinetry below the sink. The first we were aware of the problem was when I stepped in a puddle of water on the kitchen floor. I opened the cabinet doors under the sink and was met with the joyful discovery that everything in the cabinet was wet and saturated with water.
Like I do, I immediately sprang to action. I took all 54 years of my accumulated plumbing knowledge and experience and attacked the problem as I knew it was meant to be dealt with.
I jiggled the handle on the faucet.
The drip kept going.
Next, I banged the pipes and faucet with the palm of my hand just as my father had taught me. It was a tactic I had seen him utilize many times when fixing electronics, cars, toasters, and yes, plumbing fixtures. Unfortunately, this approach also failed, so I attempted my last ditch, never-fails move.
I swore at the sink and begged it to stop leaking.
Disheartened that my life lessons had proved to be of no avail, I placed a plastic bucket under the drip to minimize further damage to the woodwork in the cabinet, and I called a plumber.
Calling the plumber offered me my first (and last) bit of good luck on this horrific journey of defective plumbing. My call was answered by a friendly gentleman I shall call “Plumber Steve.” He told me that he had a few free minutes the very next day and that he would come over and take a look at my sink. Against expectations and all my previous experiences with house calls, plumber Steve actually showed up as promised at the agreed upon time. Herein ends the good parts of the story.
Plumber Steve advised me that the faucet in our sink was a special-order faucet designed to meet the exact specifications of the person who had originally installed it. This meant that Plumber Steve was unable to purchase a standard faucet and make it fit in the granite countertop we currently had in our kitchen.
“Not to worry, though,” Plumber Steve assured me. “I will just call the company that made it and have them send us a new one.”
Huzzah! thought I. Problem solved.
Two days later, Plumber Steve called me to say he had contacted the company. They informed him that the faucet I wanted had been discontinued in 2011. They no longer had any in stock.
I couldn’t help but feel this as a personal attack on me and my house. I coincidentally had moved into my home in 2011, the same year they discontinued making the faucet. It was almost as if the faucet company had a meeting on the day my family moved in.
“Is the Wilbanks family in the house?”
“Yes, boss.”
“And it’s too late for them to back out of it?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Great. Go ahead and stop making the faucet.” (This statement followed by evil laughter and the petting a large white cat sitting in his lap).
I asked Plumber Steve what he thought I should do next. He told me not to worry. Although the company no longer made the faucet, they still had some parts in a warehouse somewhere. Plumber Steve could not get me a new faucet, but he could repair the old one. It would still look like crap, but it would no longer turn our lower cabinetry into an aquarium.
I asked him how long it would take to get the parts. I could actually hear him shrug on the other end of the phoneline. “They’ll get here when they get here.”
Fast forward two weeks. The drip continued to get worse, and I was emptying the plastic bucket under our sink four or five times every day.
I received a white, plastic pouch in the mail. Inside the pouch was a tiny, paper envelope. In the envelope was a silver, faucet cap screen. Not having any idea why the hell I was receiving a faucet screen in the mail, I called Plumber Steve.
“I think they mailed a part of my faucet to my house,” I told him.
“They should be mailing all the parts to you. Let me know when you get them.”
“I have one, now.”
“There should be about fifteen different pieces.”
“I have one,” I repeated.
“There should be a lot more.”
“I have one.”
“So, what does that tell you?”
I thought about it for a moment, then said, “I’ll call you back when I have more.”
“Way to go, Stud,” he said, then hung up. (By the way, that is a direct quote.)
Fast forward another week.
By this time, I had a large pile of tiny faucet pieces gathered on my counter. I did not know if I had them all, but I was tired of waiting, so I called Plumber Steve one more time. When he asked if all the parts had arrived, I told him with absolute conviction, “I have no f***ing idea.”
I might have cried a little as well. I’m not sure. Either way, Plumber Steve agreed to come over and look at what I had collected.
It must have been everything, because about ten minutes after Plumber Steve got to my house, I had a fully functioning, non-dripping faucet again. Plumber Steve tipped his hat, took several hundred dollars of my savings, and drove off in his bright, white and blue truck, probably humming Christmas carols to himself as he left.
Currently, all plumbing fixtures are working as they should. I still have Plumber Steve on speed-dial, however, just in case. It’s 2020, and anything could happen. Besides, I don’t totally trust the toilet in the guest bathroom. I think it’s been having some late-night conversations with the kitchen faucet, and it might be getting some bad ideas.
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