How Not to Repair Your Kitchen Faucet

We have one of those kitchen faucets where the faucet itself can be removed from the base and used as a sprayer. Convenient, yes. But what happens when the plastic hose that runs from your water source to your faucet forms a tiny crack that only leaks when the hose is bent a certain way? Well, if you're my family, you don't do anything. Because you have no idea that the hose has a crack, and you have no idea that the plywood under the back half of your sink has absorbed enough water to rival a BLM marshland. In most houses, where the wood under the sink is solid, or finished, or covered in some kind of vinyl-like coating, any type of water leaking would pool up and be discovered the first time someone reached for the Comet. But for an unknown reason, the previous owners of this house screwed half-inch plywood to the existing flooring underneath our sink, such that while our hose crack was irrigating the back portion of our cabinet, the water seeped down deep into the wood, while the front portion (where our Comet is) remained bone dry. I always thought it was weird that they had installed this plywood. You can see that the original bottom had been finished to some extent -- there is some of that wallpaper-for-cabinet-bottoms sticking out from underneath the plywood. I've always been curious as to what purpose the plywood served, but have never removed it, thinking that perhaps it conceals a hidden compartment where dead bodies are hidden. Or perhaps some type of water damage from the last faucet malfunction.

Regardless of the reason for the plywood, I was irritated to learn that our faucet had been leaking for an undisclosed amount of time. And I was determined to do something about it. I mean more that call my father-in-law and ask him to fix it.

I'm not a handy person. In fact, earlier this year, when I received some junk mail telling me that I had been chosen to join the Handyman Club of America, I thought my identity had been stolen.

The truth is that I am not intrinsically un-handy, but I do lack important handy man skills such as good planning, good preparation, and good followthrough. Also I'm kind of lazy.

But -- I figured -- how hard can it be to replace a leaky hose on a kitchen faucet? (Turns out: harder than I thought). I replaced our shower head a few years ago, and it has a similar design. In fact, I got this fantastic idea to use a spare shower head hose to replace the leaky kitchen faucet hose. It fit perfectly, and I was just about to pat myself on the back when I turned the faucet on and water shot straight out of the hose connection over my face, chest, and part of the kitchen wall behind me. Okay, so lesson learned: shower parts and kitchen faucet parts are not interchangeable. But that's okay. I was just playing around anyway. How much fun could this fix-it project be if I did it with stuff that was just lying around the house?

So I went to Home Depot and picked out their best new kitchen faucet that was on clearance. There was a funny little cartoon guide to installing sinks posted on one of the racks at Home Depot. It said that professional handymen could install a new sink in about 30 minutes, an experienced do-it-yourselfer in about an hour, and a novice in about 2 hours. I figured I had at least two hours to do the job, so even if I failed to meet my own puffed-up ego's timeline, I had time to complete the job.

I got home and dove right in to the project. I twisted and contorted my body underneath the sink in such a way that, for a fat guy anyway, would make make a Cirque du Soleil performer drop to her knees in amazement. I couldn't help but wonder how my father-in-law would have fit if I'd asked him to help me. He's a big dude.

Another lesson learned: If you're going to get help from somebody, make sure it's somebody who at least has more experience than you...

Taking out the old faucet was the easy part. Which is sad, because at the end of the 'easy' part, I had a faceful of sweat and my back was killing me.

Lesson learned: You always have to replace more parts than you thought you would. I'm pretty sure that MacGyver installed my previous faucet, because the piping system looked like it had been made out of leftover parts from other projects. And, wouldn't you know it, but a) my new faucet didn't have the same size connectors to hook up to this stuff and b) the second I touched the old copper tubes, they started leaking like U-571.

Lesson learned: Worklight with hot bulb + cold water spraying on it like U-571 = bulb explosion. Yeah, I didn't see that one coming. But, on the plus side, cleaning up the shattered light bulb gave me a break from the ever-frustrating faucet installation.

It's now 11:00 PM. Laura has already gone to bed, and I've been at this for about 3 hours. I realize that a) I don't have the parts I need to replace the leaky ones b) I can shut off the water to prevent most of the leaking, but this leaves Laura and Emma without water for a whole day while I'm at work.

I decided that leaving my wife and child without water is an unpardonable sin, so I worked on devising some way to have a working water hookup while minimizing any leaking. Fast forward to 1:30 AM. I had successfully mounted the new faucet, at least, which of course was much harder than unmounting the old one, even though they were exactly the same steps done in reverse order. I discovered that one way to make it easier was to remove some of the drainage pipes from under the sink. I also discovered that you don't want to see what's in those pipes, or have the contents of those pipes land on your shirt, neck, and face.

I was able to use existing parts to hook up the hot water only; the cold water to the sink and refrigerator had to be shut off. I dragged myself to bed, leaving a note for Laura telling her that I had partially failed as male provider (I did leave the hot water on, after all) and that I'd be able to fix the rest the next day.

At work the next day I told a co-worker that I was "having problems with my plumbing" which of course made me burst out laughing after I heard it phrased that way. He told me about a place called England Plumbing on 33rd south in Salt Lake. It reminded me of a time my brother-in-law was trying to fix something and had ended up there after 3 trips to Home Depot. Still, there was a Home Depot up the street from me at work....and I didn't want to drive across the valley....so I went to Home Depot anyway. I had the hardest time explaining what I needed to the guy, but ended up with a handful of parts anyway which, once I got the car, I realized would not fit where I needed them to fit. So I broke down and stopped at England on the way home from work, where they were fanastic and got me everything I needed.

Once home, Laura forgave me for the lack of cold kitchen water, and kindly kept Emma out of the way as I tried to complete the project. The only remaining hiccup I had was with a compression fitting for the plastic tubing that went to our fridge. I got on the internet to see what I could find about compression fittings when I stumbled across a Readers' Digest article about replacing kitchen sinks. Step one was "Work on your project during the day when the hardware stores are open. Chances are you'll need to make at least one trip there during the project." Thanks, Readers' Digest. Step one of your article should have been "Read Readers' Digest article so that you're smart enough to work on your project during the day when the hardware stores are open."

Anyway, with all the right parts, I was able to successfully replace all the faulty pieces, attach all the new hoses to the new faucet, and successfully provide my family with water of both the hot and cold varieties.

So if any of you come over to our house, go ahead and make a big deal out of our kitchen faucet. Why? Because I bought the exact same model as our old one. So the average person won't even know there was a change.

Quinn