Since being a stay at home mom, I find that I have really taught myself how to do many things around the house. Today I taught myself how to remove my kitchen faucet and replace it with one I found on clearance at Lowe's.
Now I will give you a little background. We had a house built in 2006 by some people that I will just say are incompetent. I could go into a full tirade on this but will save my energy. Our house is structurally perfect, but there are many little things that were done in a cheap and quick way. Luckily, my dad lives two miles away and is our handy man. Well, our kitchen faucet has been dripping for about a week. It is to the point that when I try to go to sleep I can hear it and then obsess on it, resulting in little sleep. Yesterday, I decided I had enough of the dripping! I watched my son get onto the bus and off to school, I loaded the girls into the car and we headed over to Lowe's in search of a new faucet. I was excited to see they had several on clearance and one I really liked. The girls agreed that it was the one, with Emily claiming that she liked that it was sparkly and Hayley said she liked the "squirter." So we paid for our faucet and made our way home.
After picking Joey up from school and making the kids lunch, I decided I was going to attempt to replace the faucet myself. I am an A type personality, so I read the directions thoroughly, grabbed all the necessary tools and went to work. Within one minute, my three trusty helpers decided that helping me was more important than eating lunch. Since I want all my kids to learn they can do things themselves, I decided to let them help. After some arguing over whose job it would be to hold the flashlight, Emily won out (though I was hoping for Joey, my oldest). Joey and Hayley then decided they needed their own tools and made their way to Joey's Little Tikes tool bench and gathered a pair of plyers, a screwdriver and the hammer.
Let's just say the hardest part was trying to figure out how to get the old faucet out. This was only difficult because with "all my plumbing" exerience I decided it must come off from the top. For those of you attempting this in the future, it comes off from under the sink, which makes perfect sense after seeing how it is installed. I used the installation directions and worked backwards to finally remove the old one. From there it was quick and easy.
One funny little thing did happen with the kids. As I was unscrewing the pipes and such from underneath, I was laying on my back under the sink, little bits of dust and such fell into my eyes. I told the kids I need some goggles and started to make my way to the basement to find some. Emily said she would get me some. Within 30 seconds, she came back with a pair of Disney Princess swimming goggles and put them on me. They were uncomfortable to say the least, but I wasn't going to tell Emily that since she was so proud to have had such a great idea. In the end, they worked perfect and nothing else fell into my eyes.
It was actually much easier than I thought and it was fun to have the kids help me out! Now I am searching the house for other projects to do. My dad is out of town, but I just think he may be impressed I attempted it myself when he returns!
Go girl!
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