Faucet Blues

Yesterday we had big plans. We were going to make some fresh pasta, maybe bake a cake or five, probably roast a suckling pig and generally outdo ourselves in the kitchen. It was to be a day of great culinary triumphs and we were looking forward to the challenge.

The day started innocently enough with a 9am call from our friendly plumber, let’s call him Zach. Zach came by to fix a minor leak on the kitchen faucet. Further prodding led Zach to believe that a gasket, not the entire faucet, would have to be replaced. Fine. Removing the wall-mount faucet confirmed our previous suspicions that the mastermind plumbers of our 1920s charmer had plotted to thwart all future plumbers. Umpteen years ago they attached copper to iron pipes, knowing that someday, the pipes would inevitably corrode and snap off. But no matter. We totted off to do some errands and left Zach to work his magic.

When we arrived home, we found that our landlord in his infinite goodness had sprung for the crappiest faucet on the market, a shiny “pro-plus” that we were confident would last about five minutes. We overestimated. Moments into washing our dishes, the faucet gave out, spraying water in multiple directions and immediately flooding the counter and then the floors. It was then that we discovered another feature of our quaint old apartment building: the water shut-offs are missing knobs. Finally, after much scrambling and the assistance of our landlord’s second, along with her ankle-biting dog, the water was shut off and Zach was called back to the scene.

While we waited for Zach, we mopped up the floor of our sad little kitchen and got to thinking about our old Delta faucet. Unlike our wimpy new pro-plus, the Delta had charm. It had charisma. And really, what’s so bad about a little leak?

Photo by Rachael Coyle