"Hey Chris."

"Yeah?"

"The sink is still leaking."

"..."

I was flipped upside down under the kitchen sink in our newly purchased house, shining a tiny Mag-lite on the plastic piping. A small but persistent flow of water dripped from the elbow joint onto the warped cupboard floor.

The sellers had signed off on a legal document that stated the plumbing in the kitchen no longer leaked, but clearly, just because the law said that it was so, didn't make it so.

It's the week before we move in, and we are both a bit anxious about the change. We also want to make sure that everything works. Which it doesn't. Does it ever?

My sister and I went to Home Depot the next day and passed an aisle with a sign: Sink Repair. I ducked down it, thinking, well, maybe someone would be able to give me an idea about what to do.

A man who was almost completely spherical, wearing Home Depot's signature orange apron sidled up to us. He looked like a piece of tropical fruit. I was holding a kitchen sink basket kit in my hands.

"Hey! I was wondering if you could tell me if these things are easy to replace?"

"Oh, yeah. Just pop out the old one and put the new one in with like, a pinky's worth of plumber's putty around the underside." He demonstrated by holding up a pinky the size of a sausage link.

"Do we need any special tools?" Kristi asked, ever thinking logistically, god-bless her heart.

The man who could have been an orange shrugged a little and pointed to a wall of wrenches.

"You might need something to loosen the old one."

"Well," I began. "The old one isn't really 'old,' it's just not put in there right. Or maybe there's a piece missing. That's why we thought it would be easier to replace it."

"Oh, then yeah, you'll probably be fine."

He handed us a mini-tub of putty and sent us on our way.

When we got back to the house, the sink sneered at us in an anthropomorphic appliance way that to me, signified war.

I dropped a pile of fresh rags under the sink and stuffed myself back in the little opening.

"How do you pop this thing out?" I asked, digging at it with a screwdriver.

"Give me that, moron." Kristi took my place and unscrewed the biggest ring with our hefty new pipe wrench. I grabbed it from her and swung it around, slapped it into my palm.

"Colonel Mustard, in the dining room, with the pipe wrench." I muttered, and thought about how I had never held such a substantial piece of metal before with the capacity to do such damage. Holy crap that thing was heavy.

"Hey! He didn't even use any putty in here! And he left a cardboard ring on top of the rubber seal!" I found that all out the hard way as little soaking globs of caulked cardboard came dripping down my sleeves. I felt pretty tough. I knew what I was talking about here.

We replaced the main drain basket and reconnected the pipes. We turned on the water. No leaks. I checked with the flashlight, waiting for the tell tale beading to occur on the rim of the attachment. After a few minutes, I declared it officially cured.

"The other sink drain is probably the same deal, you know. We should take that one apart too." Kristi wiped her hands on a towel and grimaced at the smaller sink.

We took it apart and restructured it, then squished it into place. I hadn't used as much putty as I thought I might have over done it the first time, so when we turned on the faucet, water slipped in the gap and ran down the pipe.

"Houston, we have a problem."

"Good night!" I said. "I can't do this! I don't know what I'm doing. We don't know what we're doing. This sucks."

"It's okay, you know. We'll just take it apart again and start over. We're following the instructions on the box, and the orange guy told us the same thing. Here." She thrust the putty container into my hands. "Just use more of this."

Once more, we disassembled the drain and built it from scratch. This time I used a sausage link sized snake of putty, just like the orange's finger.

We turned on the faucet and watched the water for several minutes. I flopped down on the floor and shined the light into the darkness.

"Well?" Kristi asked.

"I think we have achieved our projected orbital trajectory!" I exclaimed, and we did a little victory dance in the pile of wet rags.

"Okay, let's not get too excited, we still have to shelf paper the cupboards."

"Ungh!"

Thanks, Kristi, for helping my first plumbing repair experience not totally suck.