New Thing #37 - Miss "I-Couldn't-Quite-Fix-It"

I attempted to fix my kitchen faucet this week. It did not go well. Some profanity may have been used.

I've had a slow steady drip from my kitchen faucet for about two weeks now. It started relatively slow, so I didn't really pay much attention to it. It got worse after I returned from Indy, but I just didn't really have the time to try to fix it. I did some research, googled fixing a leaky faucet and figured I could handle it. Or, at least I would try to.

So, for awhile now, I've had this constant drip. If you've never been to my house, it will amuse you to know that my kitchen is right next to my bedroom. And water dripping into a metal sink is probably the most annoying thing to hear when you're trying to sleep. It reminds me of that damn crocodile that chased after Captain Hook in Peter Pan. Don't laugh, you know what I'm talking about. I had to put a washcloth in the sink to muffle the noise. But even that didn't help sometimes. Why didn't I just shut off the water, you ask? Hmm, gee, why didn't I think of that?

I caught the drip in action.

Actually, I attempted to turn the water off to look at my faucet when the leak first started. And, it was definitely an attempt. My house is old, I will admit that, but it has lots of modern updates. The shut off valves for the kitchen sink are not one of them. The cold water was relatively easy to turn, so I turned as far as I could. Next, I attempted the hot water. It didn't budge. At all. I tried again and felt a slight movement. I don't really consider myself a weak person, but this was ridiculous. And trying to get leverage under a sink when there's a garbage disposal in the way, is a huge pain in the butt. I guarantee you I had a bit of plumber's crack showing from the way my body was contorted to try to fit under the sink. Makes me appreciate what real plumbers go through. Almost. Eventually after some profusive swearing, the hot water finally started to move. Years of gunk build up has not been kind. I finally kept turning until I couldn't turn any more. I got up, tried both of the knobs, and water still came out of both. Damn it. I gave it a second to see if it was just residual water left in the line. Nope. Fresh water was still a-flowin'. I grabbed my rubber non-slip bottle opener, resumed the Crouching Tiger position, and put my whole back into the cold water valve. Success! No more water. The hot water valve was another story. I put every muscle into that damn thing, and still no luck. I still had a pretty steady stream of water. Son of a bitch. I gave up and came back to it the next day. Meanwhile, the drip still haunted me. I dreamt about the stupid thing.

This continued for a week. Each night, I attempted to turn the hot water valve off, and I was only successful in moving it a miniscule amount. You have no idea how pissed off I was. There was no way I could even think about trying to fix the faucet if I couldn't even turn the damn water off. I was determined to do this myself, so I didn't think to ask for help. If I had, someone might have suggested turning the entire house's water supply off, but I wasn't that bright. My faucet rage blinded me to all intelligent options.

One night, I found justice in the world, and I turned the valve as far as humanly possible. And the water was off. OFF!! Finally, ya' wily bastard! Crap, now what do I do? I spent so much time just trying to get the water off, that now I was clueless as to where to go from there. After some clever googleing and a rather dull video on YouTube, I figured I could do this. I'm smart, I'm independent, I can fix my faucet. Right? While I'm on the computer in the other room, I hear the unmistakable drip...drip....drip I had heard for two weeks straight. WTF? The water is off, dammit. I know it is. I checked! And yes, when I went back in to check, I turned both knobs on and nothing came out. Except that f'ing drip. How in the hell can the faucet drip when the water is off? I thought logically and figured that there must be some water left in the line, and if I leave the knobs on for a bit and empty out the sprayer, surely that will do it. Right? Nope. The plumbing gods have decided to play an evil trick on me. I am seriously ready to take a sledgehammer to this thing.

I decide to proceed with my "repair" and see if I can fix it. All the videos I watched on YouTube looked like they were for my cheap-o faucet, but when I actually took it apart, it wasn't like anything I saw online. The entire mechanism inside the knobs was completely different than what the short balding man said they should be. Crap. Now what do I do? Well, I proceeded to inspect the foreign looking things, and they seemed to be in good shape. I cleaned them anyway, as well as the inside of the knob mechanism itself. I screwed the nuts back on, added the knobs and hoped for the best. I turned the cold water valve back on, and then tried the hot water. Turns out I had turned it so far off, it was just as difficult to turn it back on. Some more profanity was used. I eventually got it, and tested the knobs again. I said a little prayer, and waited. I didn't have to wait long. The drip was back. I assumed that I might not have gotten the nuts tightened enough, and since I didn't have channel lock pliers at the time, I had to wait a few days before I could try again. My plain ol' pliers kept slipping, and I couldn't tighten it any more. I also attempted to take the actual faucet apart from the base, but it's so old, that there was no way I could unscrew it. I figured that's where the real problem was, but I couldn't get to it.

After a trip to Harbor Freight, I now had the right pliers, and I tightened the nuts down as far as they would go. Or, at least as far as my upper body strength would take them. When I turned the water on this time, I found that I made the problem worse. Yep, worse. Rather than a drip, I now had a small, steady stream of water coming out of the cold water side. I ran out of curse words that I knew. I started making things up to yell at my faucet. Could I have made it too tight? That didn't make any sense. But, it was the only logical thing I could think of. And of course, it was damn near impossible to loosen it since I had tightened it so far. I also realized that it was somehow leaking into the base cabinet as well. Can this nightmare get any worse?

At this point, I had had enough. I realized that I was not qualified to fix the faucet, and I had pretty much figured that I should just go ahead and replace the entire thing. And there was definitely no way I knew how to do that. Betsy offered her uncle's services since he lives so close to me, and none of my male relatives live close. I know my dad would have wanted to help me, but that 3 hour drive isn't quite convenient in times like this. Rod stopped by this week to take a look, and he discovered what I had finally figured out. I need a new faucet. My current one is pretty corroded on the bottom around the seals, and it's pointless to try to fix. I was actually pretty relieved. I hate my faucet, so the prospect of getting a new one that I want is exciting to me. It's amazing the things that become important when you buy a house.

So, today, I went and bought my first faucet for my first house. It was a huge pain in the butt. Do you have any idea how many different faucet choices there are? 482. Okay, that might be a slight over-exaggeration, but seriously, it was faucet overload for my brain. After about an hour of looking at chrome vs. stainless, two-knob vs. one handle, tall spout vs. low spout, faucet sprayer vs. separate sprayer, I finally chose one with the sprayer built into the faucet and a soap dispenser to take the place of where my current sprayer is. Rod is coming over tomorrow to help me install it. Well, he will probably do most of the work. I'd like to observe, but with my garbage disposal in the way, both of us won't exactly fit. I'm sure he'll talk me through it. :)

So, for this week, I attempted my first home improvement project all by myself. I may have failed in fixing the leak, but at least I tried to do it myself without any help. And I also knew when it was finally time to ask for help. Thanks to Rod for coming over, and for also coming back over to help me install tomorrow. I'm sure it will be quite an interesting experience!

Here's the old setup.

And here's my new one!! Yay!!!!! Isn't it pretty? ;-)