Home Improvement Blues

(Or How I Learned to Love Do-It-Yourself Plumbing)

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

That's the sound that has bugged me for several weeks now. Our kitchen faucet was dripping and it bothered me every time I sat down to eat or watch TV. Furthermore, that sound taunted me for my lack of knowledge and experience in fixing such problems. The incessant dripping challenged my manhood.

So Saturday, I was determined to do something about it. Of course, I don't consider myself to be a handyman, so I called my Dad for consultation. I dis-assembled the faucet and thought I had identified a suspect O-ring. So I figured I'd replace the O-ring, re-assemble the faucet and problem would be fixed. It was a good theory anyway....

I purchased a variety pack of O-rings (you never can have too many spare O-rings, right?). The one that fit this particular fixture was slightly larger than the one I replaced, but I thought the difference was negligible. My second mistake was to try to re-assemble the faucet at 11:00 p.m. As I tried to re-assemble the faucet, I encountered resistance. It seems that O-ring wasn't the right part. Now one of the cardinal rules of home repair is to never use excess force when putting things together. I ignored this rule. The result was a jammed up faucet assembly. And I broke it even more trying to undo what I had done.

So Sunday I was faced with a broken faucet instead of a dripping faucet. There would be no Sunday afternoon nap for me.

Armed with a crescent wrench, I proceeded under the sink to disconnect the water lines and remove the old fixture. This isn't an easy task. First your lying on your back in a tight place with a garbage disposal and other pipes obstructing your view and impeding movement. Second you have to work with your hands above your head for extended periods of time. And third, the space between the wall and the sink tub is extremely tight. Using a traditional wrench is nearly impossible. I did manage to disconnect the water lines by turning the nut one quarter turn at a time. The plastic wing nuts that hold the fixture to the sink were a different story. They were stuck on too tightly to loosen by hand and the space was too constricting for the wrench.

So I made another phone call to Dad. He enlightened me about a technological wonder called a basin wrench. It's a wrench specifically made to work in this tight place. So I sent Janell out to pick out a new faucet and to acquire this most necessary tool. Once she returned I was able to remove one of the wing nuts with relative ease. I thought to myself, this isn't so bad now that I have the right tool. So I proceeded to tackle the second nut. One by one, each of the nuts' wings broke off - leaving a nut with no surface for the wrench to take a hold of. Why do they make a nut out of a breakable plastic material and then provide no fail safe to the design for instances such as this?

I was stuck once again. And I was angry and frustrated. I was ready to take a crow bar to the entire sink assembly and do some real demolition. After a brief cooling off period, I called my father-in-law for a consult. His advice: chisel the nut off with a screwdriver and a hammer. So I proceeded to vent my frustrations out on this nut and enjoyed every moment.

Once the old fixture was off, the new one was relatively easy to install. Of course, the old supply lines wouldn't fit the new fixture, so I had to make one more trip to the store before the project could be completed (My dad says all plumbing projects require a minimum of 3 trips to the store).

So after a couple hours of toil and frustration and $100, I no longer hear that drip. And I can console myself with the knowledge that a plumber would have charged me twice that.