American Warmonger

Houses SUCK! part II

Well, happy birthday to me...do go down to Lowes and fix the kitchen sink!

Okay, here's the story. Our kitchen sink suddenly lost pressure on my birthday. It was bad, but we could get by. Yesterday was great. We had some friends over and my wife, as always, gets told to go into the restaurant or catering business. She's a fabulous chef that would probably be kicked out of culinary school because the instructor would CONSTANTLY be doing something wrong. Yes, she's that good and never went to school for it. Anyway, that's not the point of the story.

Today, the day after, it is my sole task to get the sink from low to full flow. So, at 4PM I went down to Lowes, found out what I needed to do and went home. Basically, it was assumed that I had a "ball-type" sink and was told how to take one of them bad boys out. So I go home and start to disassemble, with the water OFF, just in case you were wondering. I get down to the stem and can go no further. There is such a calcium build-up that it won't budge.

In my grand intelligence I take the parts that I have managed to take off and a couple of digital pics of what I have left back to Lowes for some help. Maybe there's a special trick to getting that last remaining bastard part off. The guy at Lowes takes one look at the picture and knows exactly the type of assembly I have:

Hey! I know that one! I'd recognize it anywhere! Yeah, we don't sell that assembly. The assembly you're looking for is solid brass and can only be found at this one specialty plumbing store and they'll have to special order it. It's shouldn't run more than 30-40 bucks.

Great, I'm already halfway there sooo, I guess I'll be taking a whole new faucet assembly. It's a nice one too. It has a button on the pull-out head that will change from steady flow to shower mode. All in all it ran about $85. It's not too horribly priced and gets us out of the woods. Besides, the old one is probably 25 years old. It's about shot.

So we get the new one home, start running through the installation with my son asking me about every 30 seconds if I'm done yet. Yeah, he's seven and it was cut for about the first 20 minutes.

So next, on taking out the old one I make my donation to the installation gods. Basically, this means I cut myself on a sharp edge. It's all good though. It's a sign the install should go smoothly. Everything seems to be going smashingly.

Okay, screw on nut to center copper pipe to mount faucet head. Hmmm...this nut seems to be giving me a problem getting threaded. It doesn't seem to want to go. Ah! Maybe it's one of those reverse thread jobbies. Let me look...WTF?....okay, where's the thread on this thing? There's supposed to be a friggin' thread on this nut! Well, I guess I can put that on tomorrow after I get the right nut from the guys at Lowes. I can still complete all the installation stuff, It just won't be completely mounted. It’s annoying, but small stuff that can be fixed with minor repairs. On to the install!

Alright, that should just about do it. Hmm..why the hot water valve leaking? It's completely shut off. Let me see what happens when I turn this on. That's cool, it only leaks when the valve is turned off. Since we want the valve in the ON position I can find somebody to do some solder work on the copper later.

Now, the moment of truth. Both valves on, lets flip this sucker on....*ffssshh*..*thud*...trickle.... Okay, so it's just as broke as the last one. It can't be. Damnit, there's something I'm missing. Okay, take some stuff apart, monkey with the fittings. Lets try again...trickle...great, it still doesn't work.

[continue the troubleshooting ad nauseum]

Turns out that one of the gaskets on my connection hose had disintegrated on the old hoses and had gotten clogged in the part that goes from the faucet body to the pull out faucet head. Total install time, excluding the two new problems that need fixed: 5 hrs 50 minutes. (4PM to 9:50PM)

1. Still need to get a THREADED nut.
2. Still need to fix the valve on the hot water under the sink.

Maybe I should just move into a big apartment and have someone else fix this sort of crap for me? I'm a computer geek, not a painter, or a plumber, or an electrician, or a roofer, or a builder......

...I guess I'm ALL those things now.

Posted by aakaakaak at June 5, 2005 11:44 PM