FEELING CHUFFED

Whenever I plan to do something a bit tricky around the house The Old Girl is always a but skeptical and suggests that I ring a tradesman to come and do the job.

For a while now the kitchen sink mixer has been playing up. The connecting flanges were loose and couldn't be tightened as doing so would cause leaking. The tap has been leaking which no doubt leads you to the correct assumption that I tried to tighten the flanges.

The leak got worse over the last week and T.O.G. instructed me to ring a plumber. I left a message with him on Friday morning but by Saturday afternoon I still hadn't had a response so I decided to take things into my own hands.

We have had, for many years a new kitchen mixer tap still in the original packaging. This had been given to us when some friends relocated to Scotland and gave us a brand new washing machine, a dryer, and a laundry tub system. I'd forgotten about the mixer tap and only found it last week when decluttering. "Dammit" I said when I hadn't heard from the plumber and he wasn't answering his phone "I'll give it a go myself". I actually said this out loud, to myself as The Old Girl had left on Friday to go to Kerikeri - back this afternoon. This was a great opportunity for me to do the job with perhaps some time to get an emergency plumber out if I botched the job.

I turned off the water mains and disconnected the old fitting which is now adding to the junk pile I'll take to the tip this coming week.

I successfully fitted the new fitting which by coincidence was the same model as the old one and all of the connections lined up.

And it works!

Job done although I nervously checked on the performance yesterday evening and this morning just in case. I told The Old Girl about it this morning when she called.

"Well done matey" she said which made me feel quite chuffed.