The Joys of Home Ownership (part 623)
I’ve had a problem with the taps in my house for a while.
Two of them had a slow leak, one is an occasional drip, the other a steady drip. They’ve been on my “to do” list for a while, but life has a tendency to get in the way of the little projects.
Today, we had a more pressing issue that got those two and more done.
I’ve noticed some moisture under the kitchen sink. My wife got under there and started removing all the crap we had stored in the cabinet below (it’s a large area, and there was a ton of junk that had accumulated over the years). Oh yeah… we had a problem. Apparently, the sprayer hose on my sink was split at the joint where it attaches to the faucet. Every time you turned the sink on, it would start dripping wildly down there.
With quite a bit of water all over the wood in there, we had to remove everything and set up a fan. Once it started to dry, my wife applied a bleach solution to kill anything attempting to grow on the wood. While she was doing that, I ran to the hardware store.
I picked up a couple of cartridges for the two leaking faucets I had mentioned earlier, and started pricing a new spray hose.
$40?!? For a friggin’ spray hose?!?
“Screw that”, I said, and started looking at new faucets. The one we had was a little dated, so I looked at my options. I settled on a Delta faucet where you could grab the head and pull it out of the neck for use as a sprayer. Of course, it was $128, but I had a gift card of $50 as part of a rebate on a ladder we had purchased to paint the house, so it was the same price as a normal one (and apparently the MSRP is over $100 more… so in retrospect, I got a smokin’ deal).
Two hours and 3 trips to the hardware store later… everything is done. No leaks, no drips, life is good!
You can’t get a better faucet than a single handle Delta when you live where you have lots of sediment in your water supply. You can fix a leaking Delta for under five bucks whereas a Moen will set you back about $30 to fix (not counting the cost of the special tool needed to remove a Moen cartridge. YOU DID GOOD!!!!!!
1The joys of home ownership are endless. You realize that the more you look at the new tap you are going to think that maybe you should replace the sink… and while you are at it how about a new counter top… a new floor would be nice. Don’t you just love your mother in law. lol
2I hate it when I pull on my head to get it out of the neck and find I have a leak! But it aint the hardware store I go to for a fix on that problem 😉 LOL!
3The old faucet was a Moen. The price to repair it was way to damn high for my tastes (and the other two I fixed were also made by Moen… they’re damn proud of their parts, and they’re priced accordingly). I didn’t realize there was a special tool to remove the cartriges… I just grabed a pair of plyers and pulled them out.
As for replacing the sink…. that actually crossed my mind while I was buying the new faucet. That’s another reason why I purchased the one I did (it will work in a 1 or 3 hole sink… you just remove the base for a 1 hole).
As for Tom’s leaking head… hell… I always knew there was something wrong with you.
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