Opinion : A Mr. (try to) Fix It\'s Father\'s Day to remember

Ah, Father’s Day.

The day for dads from all over to do special things, go to nice restaurants, and receive phone calls and other messages of appreciation while they celebrate the importance of their role.

My Father’s Day was especially unforgettable, as all of those things above happened to me.

It actually started a few days before Father’s Day when a daughter excitedly ran into my room and said, “Dad! The kitchen is flooded.”

I had left a water filter pitcher in the sink, with the water on low, so it could fill while I did other things. But instead of filling the pitcher, the faucet directed the water to the kitchen floor and the under-sink cabinet, which contains products and devices for cleaning up every potential kitchen mess – except floods.

This began a saga that continued through Father’s Day.

We did, indeed enjoy a meal, on Friday night, as we went to a city with late-night building supply stores. We found a faucet that would work and returned home to install it.

Those who know me know that I am not a plumber (or any kind of construction trade expert). Most of my projects end up with me inspired to write about how to do something – and how I learned what to do by first doing what an expert would have told me to not do.

Plumbing – from my experience, at least – is the easiest of the building trades. The tools are simple; there is very little heavy lifting, and if you mess up, you only get a faceful of water. And yes, I received several measurable facefuls this past weekend.

What makes plumbing difficult is getting to the areas where you need to work. You need to be part acrobat and part Elastic Man to reach under sinks, into crawl spaces and countless other places where, its seems, government regulations require plumbing to be just out of reach of my limited tool and skill sets.

In order to reach the connections, I opted to remove the sink. It turned out to be a good decision, but one that required more work – and of course, more trips to the plumbing aisles.

The sink came out easily; the connections disconnected as they should. So far, so good.

The new faucet fit; I had had my doubts. The connections were easy to re-connect. The sink went back into its slot as expected.

Then the trouble began.

First the new faucet’s connection pipes were too short to reach the house fixtures.

I figured out how to deal with that. Then the real problems began.

First, one of my intake hoses began leaking

Then the sink and its drains, which had not leaked before, began leaking in several places.

This required the replacement of approximately 83.56 percent of the plumbing under the sink, and repeated trips to the basement as well as more sojourning to “Clueless guys R Us” in search of parts that fit the parts I bought during the last trip.

This continued until Father’s Day.

Then it got worse.

I was returning from the basement with one more part when I saw Kid 5 with bandages. The crock pot cord had gotten tangled as she tried to move it; when it fell to the floor she tried to catch it and burned two fingers.

While her mother tended to these wounds, I headed to Waterloo for more sink parts. After taking a wrong turn, I decided to continue on to Cedar Rapids, where I found in surprisingly quick fashion the exact part I needed, which worked better than the part it replaced.

On the way home, the gas light came on a few miles from home. “You will need to get gas when you go to town,” I told Mrs. C.

I was under the sink trying to assemble the puzzle when the phone rang, with one of those messages of appreciation.

“I would appreciate it if you put gas in the van when the light comes on,” she said, from a vehicle parked on the busiest street in town.

She was near a gas station; I figured she could get some gas. She did. But the van wouldn’t start. I guess without gas the fuel lines fill with air. Air, it turns out, does not mix with gas in internal combustion engines.

She called me a bit later to tell me how much she would have appreciated it if I had crawled from under the sink immediately to help her; I had assumed she was already on her way.

She wasn’t.

(By the way, she was using my van because her car was sitting in the driveway with the first of two flat tires it would experience that day.)

So, I wiped off the latest faceful of water and pipe gunk and went to town. The kid came home with two fingers bandages – but without the effective burn ointment she had received during a previous ER visit a few years ago.

We came home. We found our old “burn cream” and retreated under the sink, where my collection of not-fitting pipes was less menacing than the room where the abandoned woman was still steaming.

Turns out that the p-trap I bought was not the p-trap I needed. After several trips to the hardware aisles without finding a match, I decided to rig up a temporary solution.

Several hours later, I had an at-least-temporarily functioning system.

The next morning I found exactly what I had needed two days earlier.

So, I hope your Father’s Day is better than mine.

However: What I remember most about this weekend is not any of what I just wrote.

What I remember most is explaining to my 3-year-old granddaughter what a pipe and pipe wrench do (she asked), and having her and her sister both jumping on me while I tightened the connecting hose (successfully).

All of the headaches of the entire weekend were more than worth those few minutes under the sink.

I just hope that in the future, when they are older and face plumbing repair situations, my granddaughters will remember that special moment with Grandpa under the sink– and then I most sincerely hope they will call a real plumber.