Some time back in early fall, something broke inside our Moen kitchen sink faucet. The lever used to turn the water on the off would no long turn off when you pushed down. Most of the time the lever would just go flying off and crash into the sink. You had to really fight with it to turn the water off and soon life in my kitchen became a battle. You can see the stress marks in the photo above along the ring of the faucet. Over time they just kept getting deeper and deeper.
Then, one day, my wrists started to really hurt while using a knife. I mean, really hurt. I knew it was from fighting with the faucet. That was it! The damn faucet was going to get fixed, one way or another.
I walked over to Kent one day with the lever and cap in my pocket and asked for help. Maybe I just needed to replace them? A nice man told me it was much more complicated than that. I would have to get in touch with Moen and get a full faucet replacement.
Sounded easy enough so that is what I did! And we did eventually get the replacement faucet but…
We put the dish towels in the sink. I can’t remember why we did that exactly. Probably to make sure we did not end up losing some of the components.
Reg studied the instructions one more time.
He went under the link only to realize that he could not turn off the hot water to the taps. He could turn off the cold but not the hot. We went to the faucet where the contractor who did our house inspection said was where we turn off the water for the house. (Turns out it turns off the water to the backyard!) That did not work. Reg turned off faucets in the ceiling. That did not work.
That was it. Time to call in the professionals!
I got everything we had out for him and he asked me where the water shut off valve was for the house. I panicked. Um, I don’t know… Where is it usually?
“Under the stairs,” he said.
Holy crap! I had only been on medication a couple of days for my pneumonia and the crawl space under the stairs is where we store everything.
And I mean everything! And the guy didn’t help me at all. Here I was struggling to breathe and I had to pull out all our luggage, camping equipment, Christmas crap… all by myself!
The plumber got to work and it seemed to take a long, long time. Then I heard a blow torch and I knew, this was going to cost us a lot.
Well he fixed it and here is my beautiful new faucet that I treat very carefully! I do not want to hurt it and I do not want it to hurt me. Turns out that we had to get the hot water pipe and dials replaced and when he disconnected the dishwasher, he could not re-connect it because it was so corroded so that had to be fixed. Yup, cost us hundreds of dollars but he said that it is good we got it done now, that we prevented much more serious problems down the road by taking care of it now.
My serious hiatus from real food cooking actually helped my wrists heal (knock on wood) and how nice is it to not have to grapple with the faucet to turn on the water? It was so embarrassing when guests would visit and try and use the faucet and the top would go flying off and smash into the sink. I’m pretty sure that is how I broke a lot of our drinking glasses which we have almost run out of, I made that lever go flying at least a hundred times!
It is good to try and get some things done in the kitchen yourself but when it comes to plumbing? Call a professional. It took us two months to get this addressed because we just did not know what we could and could not do and it is always more complicated than you think. Not to mention expensive!
Call a plumber and get it done right.
Kudos to Reg for even attempting it. I would not have been so brave!
Hooray, at least it’s fixed and you don’t have to hurt yourself anymore struggling with it.
Your “under the stairs” cleanout looks just like ours when I need to get at something, such a tedious task isn’t it?
Oh wow! You have really made me cringe. We have a Moen and it is doing the same thing. We are in the midst of remodeling our entire house and were going to try to hold off replacing it until we got to the kitchen. But I’m no so sure the faucet is going to hold out that long. Yikes!
I agree! When in doubt call the professionals!
Me either Debra! I was very proud of him for trying and I know he could have done it had we been able to shut the water off.
Ava, it is so nice to not fight my sink anymore, LOL.
Amy, sorry about that! The good news Moen will replace the the faucet and we did manage to not call a plumber for two months but I am very fragile and it was getting ridiculous. If you can replace if yourself, it won’t be a big deal. We just had lots of other issues pop up too.
Thanks Tournesol! 🙂
Great decision on calling the plumber, right? I don’t think it’s bad to do it your way, but if you’re not trained in fixing faucet issues, you might make the damage worse. Your plumber’s hand can make the process a lot easier and more convenient for you. It’s almost two years now, and I hope your caring plumber works with every plumbing issue that you’ve had. 🙂
“Call a plumber and get it done right.” – Wise words. There’s no harm in trying, but sometimes it’s better to call a professional right away instead of making things more disastrous by trying to fix it on your own. Yes, it could be expensive, but at least you are assured they’ll do it right.
“It is good to try and get some things done in the kitchen yourself but when it comes to plumbing? Call a professional.” — Definitely. There’s nothing wrong about doing the job all by yourself. However, there are some areas that are beyond our knowledge. Aside from that, calling for help will keep you from being frustrated when the result goes far from what you expected.
Angela Cyrenne