Replacing a kitchen faucet = medium difficulty

After viewing a few youtube videos on swappng out a faucet, I decided to take a shot on this plumbing project. Fortunately, this story has a haping ending, but not without a trip to Lowes, a metal shard almost stuck in my eye, and a few creative solutions.

STEP 1: turn off the water valves under the sink.

















STEP 2: remove the existing hardware. This part could have been easier, but I was unable to disconnect the final nut securing the faucet to the countertop. Here is a picture from underneath the sink looking up at the underside of the cabinet:

















While I was trying to loosen the nut, shards of metal were dropping down on my face. I decided to put on protective goggles, and went into the bathroom to flush my eye with water. Still unable to get this nut loose with my adjustable wrench, I decided to go to Lowes to purchase a plumbers wrench which did the trick... albeit a little challenging.
















STEP 3: Insert new hardware

I purchased a new gasket to act as a washer between the faucet and the countertop. Not sure if this was the correct product, but it seems to work well so far and the old one completely disintegrated.

















I also had to insert a spacer underneath the countertop for the faucet to sit plumb and needed to remove the old copper tubing completely and connect the hot and cold tubes to the water valves. Using plumbers tape helped and a lucky guess led me to securing hot to hot and cold to cold on the first try.

STEP 4: Test

















Success!

Total work time: 75 minutes (not including trip to Lowes). Difficulty level: 3 out of five.

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Plumbing Part II

Ok, so I spoke too soon. As you may have read in my previous post "Duff Plumbing in Norristown..." I thought I had fixed the slow leak problem that the toilette was exhibiting. Every 5 minutes or so, the toilette would start to refill for abut 10 seconds, then stop. This "slow leak" was diagnosed by Duff's Plumbing, and suggested resolution was to swap out the flapper.

The flapper fixed the problem for a short while, but ultimately the slow leak resurfaced. I went back to Duff's to readdress. The guy at the counter suggested that it may not be a flapper problem at all. Instead, he suggested that the problem might be a siphoning issue. Pretty cool, right? Well this time, he was spot on.

If you notice in the picture below, there is a black tube that extends from the flushmaster down into the white overflow pipe?




This tube cannot be too long. If it extends too far down the overflow pipe (white pipe pictured), then siphoning can occur.





I used a household scissors and clipped the tube and now finally the problem is officially corrected.

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Duff Plumbing in Norristown Does It Again

Our bathroom toilette started making a water noise as if it was filling up the tank for about 10 seconds, then stop, then wait for three minutes and start over again. I took a picture of the tank...





... and went to my favorite pluming supply store, Duff Plumbing, 201 East, Lafayette Street, Norristown PA 19401, 610-275-4453 http://www.duffcompany.com/ and showed the guy my pic. He told me that it sounds like the toilette is leaking water and the first step would be to replace the flapper. He told me to run my finger along the rim to make sure there is no gunk or residue.





Three dollars later, I replaced the flapper and the problem is solved. This took about 2 minutes to fix. Thanks Duff.

Location:201 East Lafayette Street, Norristown PA 19401

Deck pad works great for staining the deck

Anticipating three sunny days in a row, I decided to bite the bullet and finish the deck staining project that began last november. Good thing I called Mom to wish her a happy Mother's Day because she had a great suggestion, to use a Shure Line deck pad at Lowe's. It was able to get in between the spindles and it was easy to use. I did notice that the pad would start to slip off so I found a way to hold the pad with my finger inserted in the center to keep it in place.





I also figured out a way to secure the paint tray to the ladder so that I wouldn't have to continually go on and off the ladder to add paint to the pad by using a 1 foot segment of closet shelving zip tied to the ladder. It actually worked out great.






I'm not sure if all extension ladders are position the same but when I zip tied the shelving to the ladder, it rested in such a way that it had a slight slope which helped keep the stain towards to bottom.

Old fashioned ingenuity meets modern day technology

I was planning on spending the afternoon staining the deck and really wanted to use my iPod, but the headphone jack has messed up ever since the headphones got ripped out of the jack one too many times. Whenever I put the iPod in my pocket, every move I made would adjust the headphone jack just slightly enough to make a loud static noise in my ear - really annoying. So I decided to take matters into my own hands (inspired by the NPR segment on going to your grandpa to fix whatever was broken) and tried using my favorite tool, the rubber band, to secure the jack from moving. I attached the rubber band, put the ipod on my pocket, and low and behold, my music worked static free for hours.