April 29, 2016
Dear Everyone:
The trouble with owning your own home is:
When something goes wrong, you’re the one who has to fix it.
Or pay someone else to do it.
My two-bedroom condominium was originally a two-bedroom apartment, built
sometime in the late 1980s.
Then, about ten years ago, a Developer bought the whole shebang, along
with three other communities all built around the same hill, and
converted it to condos. The
Developer renovated the insides to the tune of upgrading the kitchen and
bathrooms, replacing all the door handles with the
ever-so-popular-at-the-time “satin nickel”, and adding crown molding to
the ceilings.
What this ultimately means is:
The kitchen and bathroom fixtures are all ten years old, except
for the shower which I had installed when I bought the place.
(Love that shower!)
And now one of the bathroom faucets has begun to drip.
Only to be expected after ten years.
Remember: This is
California. Despite the
lovely rain that we’ve been enjoying all winter and all the way into
spring, the state is still very much in an official
drought.
No wasting water with some annoying little drip.
And I knew what to do. After
all, I had replaced a washer on the kitchen sink in my first condo in
"Pleasant Hill", many, MANY years ago.
I still had the Fix-It-Yourself-Book, which I had purchased
around the same time as the original condo.
There was really only one problem:
The new fixtures didn’t match the much-older book.
Specifically, the book reads, “Close the tap under the sink.
Then pop the ornamental cap off the handle and unscrew the screw
holding the handle in place.”
However. The new
satin-nickel handles are levers and don’t have a cap, decorative or
otherwise.
I tried numerous online helpful videos, all of which began the same way:
“Close the tap under the sink, then pop off the decorative cap…”
In the meantime, the faucet was still dripping.
I put a one-quart container under the faucet in the sink to catch
the drips. I figured I could
use the water to refill the bird bath / fountain on the patio.
And water the potted stone pine tree that I got last
Christmas.
The container filled up in less than a day.
I put a larger container in the sink.
That night, I heard a steady “Plink!” as soon as I turned off the
TV. “Plink!”
One…two…three…four…fi-“Plink!!!”
No way was I going to get any sleep with that racket going on.
I did what any homeowner would do.
I put a sock on it.
That’s right. Pulled a sock
out of the drawer and slipped it on over the faucet.
The idea is, the water drips into the sock, which stops it right
there. Gradually, as the
sock gets more wet, the drips, following the line of least resistance,
travel along the cloth to the side of the container, then down from
there. The result is no
annoying sound.
It worked perfectly. And by
the next morning, the sock was wringing wet and the two-quart container
was nearly full. Clearly,
the faucet was dripping more than my patio needed on a regular basis.
I might have to start watering all the trees in front of my
building.
So, for the time being, I just reached under the sink and closed the tap
to the hot water side, that being the one causing the drip.
This of course, was a temporary solution.
Since I primarily use this bathroom for brushing my teeth, fixing
my hair, etc., I generally only use it in the morning and evening.
It was inconvenient, but eminently doable in the short run.
“Jeannie’s” solution was simple, straight forward and succinct:
Just use the other bathroom.
Back to trying to figure out how to fix the problem.
In time I did run across a video that showed a plumber working
with a handle similar to the ones I have.
He slipped a hex key wrench into a hole in the side of the
handle.
I had already determined that there was a soft, rubber plug in the
underside of each handle, red for hot water and black for cold water.
The question was: Did
I have a hex key wrench of the appropriate size?
Many, MANY years ago, the Mt Diablo Chapter of
ARMA International used
to have an annual Silent Auction.
One year, one of the items was a driver and socket kit for which
I aggressively out bid everyone else in the room, including the person
who donated it and really, really wanted it for herself.
It contained some 116 useful items, such as a screw driver handle
with multiple bits to fit just about any screw head imaginable, along
with a plethora of socket wrench gizmos.
It also contained 22 hex key wrenches in two colors and eleven
different sizes.
I found the right size on the fourth try.
Once again,
Records Management to the Rescue.
After I got the handle off, it was a matter of using a standard wrench
to remove the locknut that holds the stem assembly in place.
(Having a Fix-It-Yourself-Book means finding the right
terminology, even if you can’t find the right part.)
Did I have such a wrench?
It took some digging to find it, but it turns out I did.
A dash of WD-40 and the locknut came off and it was off to the
races. Or, off to the local
hardware store, with all the little pieces in a plastic baggy.
Once again, the Fix-It-Yourself-Book was a tad bit behind the times.
These days, you don’t replace just the
washer.
It’s much easier to replace the entire cartridge.
(“You kids have it so easy today!
In my day, we didn’t have any of these new-fangled cartridges.
We had to grow our own
rubber tree to make the washers, not to
mention carving the pieces out by hand, one by one, using only the light
from the fireplace because candles were too hard to come by.”
Actually, it’s becoming illegal to do anything by firelight
because burning anything, including fireplace logs, on “Spare the Air”
days is a punishable offense.
So much for the Good Old Days.)
At the hardware store a helpful employee consulted a myriad of stem
cartridges and ultimately settled on one that was “sort of right” albeit
a trifle too high. He
recommended that I try it and bring it back if it didn’t work.
It would be just like the Developer to install a whole line of
products that were on sale because they were being discontinued,
wouldn’t it?
Back in the bathroom, I fitted all the pieces together “more or less” in
the correct order. Turned
the tap under the sink back on.
No drip. Placed a
small container under the faucet and went to make some lunch.
Half-an-hour later, still no drip.
Both hot and cold water handles are working and no drip.
Total outlay: $4.76.
Considerably less than it would have cost to get a plumber to
come in and do much the same thing.
And I got to try out the hex key wrenches.
In other news…
The rumors are true: After
some 30+ years I finally bought a new electric
mixer.
Yes, it is a KitchenAid.
Yes, it did cost quite a bit, but I
saved $70 thanks to one of
those 20% off coupons that fill my mailbox.
And yes, it is lovely and easy to work with.
Also very heavy. And
I won’t need to get another one for at least 30 more years.
Love, as always,
Pete
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