Leaky "faucet"

It was this past Thursday when Graham woke me up and said, "Momma, there's a leaky faucet."  Well, I didn't think of it too much - obviously just imagining the bathroom faucet with a small drip.  When I finally do get out of bed 10 minutes later, I check on this leaky faucet and Splosh! Splosh! All the bathroom rugs on the floor are completely soaked!!  What is Graham talking about here??!  I listen closely and I hear a drip, drip, drip... and it's coming from under the bathroom sink. Oh boy!!!

This leak wouldn't really be much of an issue but I had to get ready as I had my volunteer shift at Charlie's school this same morning. So, out went all the bathroom rugs onto the fence in the backyard (so glad we didn't get rid of this metal fence!) and looking for a huge bowl/bucket to collect the drippy water. I put Bobby in charge of emptying out this water while I was at school for the morning.

And oh, Charlie even had some time to put up a "Do Not Enter" sign.  LOL!!!

In the meantime, off to school! Charlie is looking lovely this morning for Picture Day!  I love how he is now able to tie up his hair in the mornings:

3 hours later - on the way home, the clouds are looking quite angry in the Pacific Ocean:

We are expecting some rain tonight.  As per usual, we could always use the rain!

 Looks like this is the culprit - it's the shut-off valve:

And since this outdoor faucet is dripping as well, I might as well undo that and get a new part too when I go to the store:

These things are nasty looking!!

Here goes!!!

Thankfully the shut-off valve to the house is an easy 1/4 turn.  Shiny new valves installed!

And these are also 1/4 turn shut-off valves which at first made me a bit confused.  The water pressure was really low so I thought that had something to do with it:

In the meantime, the outdoor faucet is looking nice and brand new too. I haven't tested this one yet, but can't imagine it would be causing any issues.  Guess I'll find out the next time I turn on the water for the sprinkler lines:

Ps. Also bought some new flowers while I was at the store :-)

I thought that maybe the old shut-off valves just needed a nice cleaning.  Maybe it was all that gunk from the hard water was causing it to leak:

After soaking these valves with water and vinegar, ta da!!!  Look how shiny and clean they look!

I figured I'd wait until the weekend to tackle this job again.  So on this Saturday morning, I had the boys help me out with the plumbing.  Graham was up first:

And then Charlie's turn.  Both complained about how sore and tired their arm was while having to turn those bolts.  Ha ha!

Well, if it was only that easy but we installed and uninstalled and re-installed and uninstalled again.  This reason being that water pressure - why is the water pressure suddenly so bad??!  And then, there was hot water but no cold water despite using the new valves?!

Bobby obviously had some suggestions... :-P

Well, come to find out, the old valves were defective.  And I had to unscrew another part of the plumbing, only to find a clogged mesh.  Yup, clogged mesh with sediments equals low and eventually blocked flow of water.  Simple as that! But man, took me forever to figure that out!

All good now!!!  Although my joints are not doing so great from all the kneeling and bending on that hard tile.  Ha!