I'm a plumber!

And not because of my pants.  One thing that I've wanted to do since we moved into this place is replace the faucets.  They were really worn out and leaking, and the shower screamed at us quite regularly (I'm not kidding.  We were concerned we had Moaning Myrtle living in our bathroom.) So anyway, I got a gift card to the Home Depot for my birthday and had a really hard time deciding what to use it for.  One day our kitchen faucet started leaking a lot more and was leaving a large puddle behind the sink on the countertop whenever we used it.  I decided that would be a good project and used the gift card to buy a new faucet.

It was my first plumbing project ever, and so far it has been really nice.

Last Saturday I was planning on doing the final touches on painting our bathroom.  As I finished my shower in the morning, I cranked the hot water valve a little too much and it slipped right past and opened it completely again.  I could never 

get it to close completely after that and it was a constant drizzle.  Fortunately we have our own water shut-off for our condo.  The Home Depot only had complete systems to replace the valves and the spout and shower head.  We didn't need those, and the ends didn't even match what we had in the wall.  I didn't want to have to rip the wall open and pull out the entire system, so we went to check at Lowe's.  They not only had the individual pieces we needed, they had the exact same brand and style that we already had in our bathroom (and it only cost about half as much including the new tool I got to buy to replace the seating).  I came home and changed it, and Moaning Myrtle has left us.  The guy at Lowe's acted offended when I told him that our valves were really old saying that 30 years is not really old.  I could call them worn out, but not old.

Anyway, I'm very happy that both of my plumbing projects have turned out so well, and that we can fix things when we need them instead of trying to explain to the apartment complex why we think we deserve something new.