DIY a Stay at Home Dad can do-A new shower head

We wanted a new shower head.  The old one was gold plated, peeling and looked like it was from the 80s; and not the good 80s either, the bad 80s. Yup, the 80s’s had great moments, but this shower head was more like Saga than Pat Benetar and that’s not a good thing.

So my wife and I purchased a new shower head.  Ok, I purchased a new shower head.  This one had several water settings that would massage, pulse and do everything but light up light like The Cash Cab when we got in.  Captain Planet himself would enter our bathroom and thank us for saving water by using the “Navy Shower” setting, as my dad called it.

So my wife and I installed the new shower head.  Ok, I installed the new shower head.  What’s so difficult about installing a shower head, really?  Unscrew, screw on, it’s like a line from Karate Kid 2.  Hmmmm…I screwed the new head on and it’s really leaking, Captain Planet won’t be happy at all about this at all now.

I’ll go get a washer, surely that’s what it needs, I think to myself.  A fast trip to home improvement Mecca to get some washers and plumbers putty, (which the sales associate said I needed) and I was back at my water albatross.

The washer and plumbers putty did not do the trick.  My father was having the exact same problem with his shower head too.  It was the identical one that the elder Mojo advised us to purchase by claiming said shower head was a great deal.

Apparently it was a great deal because the cost savings were immediately offset by the extra money you’d pay due to the water leak.  My father, the elder Mojo, took his back to the store and got another one.  I meant to do that too, but I got busy with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, the flu, my wife’s flu and then Ong Bak 3.

I procrastinated.  One day last week my wife said, ‘why just use some of that tape that we used before to stop the leak at the old house?’  “Yeah, great idea”, I said, “Wait, what tape”.  She then all but told me what isle to purchase it at along with the SKU number and cost, $1.39.  Apparently I was an experiment in a home improvement study conducted by my wife: How Long Will a Husband Let an Obvious Problem Go Without Fixing It?

As stated, in our, ok, my case, it was five months with a very leaky shower head.

Bottom line:  When you’re switching out a new handle or shower head, put plumbers Teflon tape on the threads coming out of the wall.  Wrap it around so that all of the threads are covered twice and your leak will disappear.  Switching out a shower head to a normal, leak free working order, should take 10 minutes maximum.  The five month period that we experienced was due to a busy schedule, compounded by the holidays and a first rate martial arts movie.

As a stay at home dad I miss having the spare time to fix things.  Even though the child is my full time job, things still break or need a fix in the house.  Sometimes the repair will be something that I easily complete and other times it’s a repair that I simply should’ve paid to have it done.  Regardless, I’ll write it up here in hopes that you may be able to gauge what you can do and when you need to call in for help.  The series is called, DIY a Stay at Home Dad Can Do, but in some cases, you shouldn’t, because of difficulty, time involved or money.  All dads aren’t equal.   If your fashion sense is all plumbers crack then bypass this series and go straight to the fart jokes, which should be in the next column.