Drip...drip...

For anyone who's been to my place in the last four months, you've probably been a witness to the incessant dripping that took place in my kitchen. I don't know what went wrong, but my faucet contracted a drip (wow, like a disease?).

My friend, German (pronounced hair-MON), offered to fix it every time he came over. "If you buy the part, Annie, I'll install it." Apparently the cartridge--a device that controls flow in the faucet--was bad and needed to be replaced. So I looked online and talked to my dad to figure out which part to buy.

I was quite pleased with myself when I returned triumphant from Home Depot with a Moen faucet cartridge. The next time I saw German, I was glowing with pride at the fact that I had finally broken down and decided to fix the dang thing. He offered to come over that night with his tools and replace it. Said it shouldn't be a problem, and wouldn't take long at all.

Turns out the old cartridge was much worse than we expected. If you can imagine, German was standing in the sink trying to yank this thing out of the faucet workings. Poor guy...he didn't know what he was getting himself into. Oh, and to make matters even more pleasant, one of my valves was bad, too. So at 10:30 that night, we decided to call it a day and just replace the whole dang faucet the next day.

Back to the hardware store. I wanted something nice but not completely expensive, and Home Depot actually had some great options. I settled on a good ol' simple Delta faucet with a sprayer, plain and silver. I found what I thought was a good valve, made my purchase of the items and headed home.

German came over that next day and got to work on the installation of the new faucet. And it was so pretty. But I had gotten the wrong valve, so we had to go back to the hardware store...again. Well, we hadn't budgeted enough time, and so the faucet didn't get completely installed that day...so a third day was necessary for silicone sealing and the finishing touches.

Ah, running water in the kitchen. What a wonderful blessing! And no dripping makes it even better.

This is the old faucet. You can't see it very well, but it was disgusting and corroded.


And the new one!