Originally, it was a standard sink—two drains, one faucet, and a spray nozzle that didn’t spray.

“Dribble, dribble,” my husband would grump when he used that nozzle. He hates things that don’t work properly.

Then, one Saturday (after an incident involving a saucepan), he stormed out of the house with a vow to bring back “the biggest, meanest faucet of all time.”

When he found it, he installed it himself, and he called me into the kitchen to admire his work. It’s the kind of faucet that pulls away from the sink on a hose, so that it functions as its own spray nozzle.

The water pressure is fierce.

“That’ll put your eye out if you’re not careful,” my husband said with a snort, hitching up his jeans in a manly way. He ripped the old, dribbly nozzle from its corner of the sink, and he threw it in the trash.

But then there was the hole where the old nozzle had been.

It didn’t bother me at all. I put a vase over it, and then I stopped thinking about it. But my husband really hated that hole.

“Maybe duct tape is the answer,” I heard him mumble from time to time. But, it turned out that duct tape was not the answer.

The answer was that he would install a beer tap in our kitchen sink.

“Are you kidding?” I asked when he announced it. He was flushed and grinning. There had been a brainstorming session in his office, apparently. A guy named Ryan had said something like, “Why go out to the garage for a beer when you could get beer from your sink?” And then, I imagine, someone else said, “Dude!”

My husband drew up the first blueprints that night.

He said he was thinking primarily of me. We’d been doing a lot of entertaining. His graduate students were spending lots of time in our basement, with our food and our beverages and our Xbox.

Also, they’d taught us to play beer pong, and I was great at it. At parties in our backyard, my friends were giving me nicknames like “The Bruiser.” I was saying things like, “I sink ‘em, you drink ‘em, sucka!”

It was nice to discover a new skill.

So, for that reason—and because you can buy child locks for in-home taps, and because it would mean less time at the Meijer recycling wall—I consented to the kitchen sink beer tap.

A few days later, we were at Big George’s, hunting for a refrigerator we could cut a chunk out of.

My husband’s plan was to find a fridge that would hold two quarter-sized kegs. He’d put it in the basement between the washing machine and the pool toys. Then, he’d run hoses from the kegs, through the hole he’d cut in the top of the fridge, through the basement ceiling, and up to the sink.

And it worked out exactly like that.

The night we hooked it up, my friend Laura stopped by and asked if I wanted to go exercise.

“Not really,” I said. “Watch this.”

A few minutes later, we were raising frosty glasses to our lips. By the end of the evening, we were saying things like, “Beer from the sink! It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Of course, there’s a certain discipline that’s required when beer flows from the sink as easily as water. For the first few days, a question hovered around the kitchen: Which lever to pull when I’m thirsty?

But, it didn’t take long before the tap was old news. Now, we don’t think much about it unless we’re entertaining. When a new guest enters the kitchen, there’s usually a cry of, “Awesome!”

And, luckily, our sink is also awesome in the regular sink way.

Last Thanksgiving, like every year, my husband cooked our turkey in the smoker out on the deck. We were scheduled to eat around 1:00, but since it was cold out, the smoker wasn’t heating up quickly enough.

From my perch by the kitchen window, I watched my husband stoke the coals and frown at the thermometer. I watched him walk inside. (On his way past me, he said, “I just got a great idea.”) I watched him walk back outside. (On his way past me the second time, he was carrying the comforter from our son’s bed.)

I watched him wrap the comforter snugly around the smoker. Then I saw him stand back to admire his work with a satisfied look on his face.

I’m embarrassed to say that my only thought was, “Hm. That is a great idea.”

Well, if you’re even a little bit smarter than my husband and I, you can guess what happened next. When I peeked over my newspaper a few second later, I saw only fire outside the kitchen window. It was the biggest, meanest grill fire of all time—a wall of angry flames.

No other grill has ever been on fire like this.

“Honey?” I called.

Before I could do anything else, my husband ran to the kitchen sink, grabbed our trusty faucet/spray nozzle, and aimed it out the kitchen window. The water pressure was fierce. The fire was out in a few seconds.

As we stood panting and watching the smoke float across the yard, our daughter walked into the kitchen with a preteen’s bemused expression.

She said, “That blanket’s a goner.”

I turned back to see that my husband was pulling the second of two beers from our tap with shaking hands. He took a glass for himself and gave the other one to me. Then, intoxicated with gratitude and our own dumb luck, we raised our glasses and toasted the kitchen sink.

Heather Heath Chapman is a writer who lives in Ann Arbor. You can reach her at heatherchapman1@me.com. Her husband wants everyone to know that the turkey was still delicious, although there weren't enough drippings for gravy.