I've said it before but I'll say it again.
Living in this cabin full time is like living with the Douglases at Green Acres.
If you aren't old enough to remember that TV show, click here. All will be explained.
Last week the one and only shower was having issues. Water pressure was less than perfect and the pulse part of the shower head- the one required by the three females living in this cabin if we want to get shampoo out of our hair- was not working.
Now, none of us have ever been that fond of the original shower head anyway but we've been going with the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" theory.
However, now it appeared to be broken. Yay!
I just happened to need to go over to Cañon City anyway to pick up the newly repaired sewing machine (more on that later in the week) so I scheduled an additional stop at the Home Depot.
And there I picked up this lovely:
Ooooo! Hand held. Snazzy.
The Home Depot employee assured me I could handle this. Consultation with a contractor friend reinforced that opinion. Plumbing is do-able.
And guess what? It was easy-peasy and now I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner.
You know what I had to do to get the old one off?
Unscrew it. That's it.
Didn't even require a wrench.
Didn't even have to turn the water off. (This is a shower/bath combo. Otherwise, cutting off the water to the house would have been an important step.)
On another note, it was delightful to see that the previous owners hadn't even bothered using that nice plumbing tape which keeps things tight and leak free. O well. It hadn't been a problem.
The old non-functioning shower head. Ick.
The hardest part of this whole project was getting the new shower head out of the stupid plastic clam-shell. Wrap rage- I didn't realize there was a name for that frustration!
Scissors. Frustration. Foul language.
Finally success.
Because I am a goody-goody, I did the job correctly. Plumber's tape around the existing pipe.
The new shower head will not leak!
Hook up the hoses….
And Voilá! A new functioning shower head.
All was wonderful for almost a week.
Then Friday afternoon I heard Bunny scream from the bathroom "Where's the water pressure???"
Uh oh.
That is never a good sign.
The cabin is on a well.
Well water here is FULL of minerals.
And sand.
And probably other stuff I don't want to know about.
Because of all those things that are in our (otherwise perfectly safe) well water, we have a whole house water filter. Conveniently installed UNDERNEATH the house.
In a crawl space.
Filled with spiders and Lord knows what else.
I had to crawl through THIS tiny door.
I have managed in the past four years to avoid being the one that changed the water filter.
But guess what? No other sucker one else was around.
So Saturday I got a new filter and picked up my assistant from town. (That would be my sweet friend Cherrilla who was visiting from Martha's Vineyard.)
And she helped me change the filter. Sort of.
Mostly she took some really delightful pictures. (NOT)
Into this tiny space under the house I went….
Spiders, mice, and what else??
I don't want to know.
See?
My (former) friend took this lovely shot.
Amazingly we are still speaking.
Fortunately the space was high enough for me to kind of sit up while I worked.
I'm sporting the hub's one piece jumper purchased specifically
for crawling under the house.
Stylish!
And finally I managed to remove the (disgusting) filter holder and hand it out to Cherrilla to be rinsed out.
Yep. That lovely brown stuff is what the filter removes from our water.
This filter change was a few months over due.
Success. I survived. Nothing bit me. Nothing leaks. And we have water. Clean water.
And we have great water pressure. Yay!
Which brings me back to that new shower head.
The old one probably wasn't broken after all.
I just needed to change the house filter.
O well.
We are loving the new hand held.
And I am feeling like quite the plumber.
Cue the theme song:
Click HERE if it doesn't come up automatically.
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