Adventures in Plumbing!

So Saturday was a true experience. Replacing a kitchen faucet. What could be easier, right? Wrong!

What I didn't count on was how incredibly difficult it would be to remove the old, ten year old tap that has been there as long as I can remember. That was hard. We had been debating for weeks how best to remove the old plastic nuts that were never going to be unscrewed. But Saturday, wow, it was business time.

Shut off the water and cut the old plastic tubes. Then, the plan was to install shutoff valves and turn the water back on. Unfortunately, I didn't have a crescent wrench large enough, so it was off to Canadian Tire. Half an hour later ,get the shutoff valves installed, and we're ready to turn on the water, right? Again, wrong! There was a little leak in the hot water, so I tried to tighten it a little. Unfortunately, with all the pressure behind it, the whole valve just shot off. There was water everywhere! Everywhere! Holy crap. Turn the water off and clean up.

Take two! Get the shutoff valves on, and slowly turn on the water. So far, so good. Now to get rid of the old faucet. Wrench: useless. File: useless. Hammer and chisel: useful. Yeah, I know. Good thing that tap is going in the garbage. I chiseled the plastic bits until they broke, and removed the old faucet. Time for the new one.

I'm not going to get into it, but the new one was super easy. I'd like to thank Moen for not only making their products super easy to install, but having good tech support too. Even if it did take five business days before they got back to me. Ugh.

All in all, a job well done.

That story was lame.