SInce the majority of the kitchen work is complete (only some minor details left to complete) it was time to get some of the other moinor projects that have been sitting on hold since we started remaking our kitchen. I had replaced a mirror in medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom which has been sitting in the basement for almost a year. We also purchased new bathroom fixtures last spring to replace the ones from the bathroom remodel about five years ago since the Glacier Bay fixtures we had in the sink and the shower had the finish all rubbing off.
I started with the faucet spout, which I thought would be pretty easy to get off and replace. As everything seems to go when I do a home improvement project, unexpected issues arose. The first thing I noticed was that I couldn't simply replace the handle and face plate for it since the assembly was quite different. So therefore, I will need to figure out a way to get that done and continue to use the old handle in the meantime. The problem here is that I do not have a way to access the plumbing behind the wall. The connection box has access where the handle goes into the wall and I can only get to the hot water line thru the access panel. so now my head is spinning trying to figure out how I am going to do that.
In the meantime, I thought I could get the other parts of the faucet reaplced pretty easily. The first part I tackled was the water spout. When I pulled the old spout, the length of pipe coming out of the wall came with it. For whatever reason, the guy who did the remodel used what looked like some sort of Loctite on the pipe threads so when I turned it, instead of the spout coming off hte pipe, the entire pipe screwed out of the elbow that was in the wall. It actually turned out to be a blessing, because I discovered that the new faucet had an adapter that was supposed to screw onto the pipe coming from the wall, and the spout would then screw onto that. The pipe coming out of the wall was only supposed to be about an inch. The existing pipe was 5 inches. So I had to run to the hardware store to get a replacement.
This wasn't a big problem, however after replacing the pipe and then screwing onthe adapter, and the spout, I discovered that the pipe coming out of the wall was not square, but had a slight angle to it. I discovered this because when I had it screwed to the wall, it was not flush. I thought this wouldn't be too big of a problem, I would just turn it as tight to the wall as it would go and it would square up as good as it could possibly be. Unfortunately, the ends of the spout were scrathing the tile. Since I didn't want to dig into the face of the tile, I found that if I tugged a bit on it as I turned, the pipe would move slightly out from the wall, so I coould then give it an extra two or three turns and when I let go, it would go square and tight to the wall. Which it did.
I was moving on to get the drain replaced and I was having some issues getting the thread started. But after some time, I get it on and tightened down. However, when I was tightening down the push plug, I had over tightened it, and it broke (of course!). As I was getting ready to head back to Menards to get a replacement, Kris started screaming from downstairs that there was water dripping down into the kitchen. I quickly pulled the access panel off and could see that yes, there was indeed water dripping from somewhere. I was able to turn off the water lines, and then started getting the water out of the cavity below the tub. As I was drying things out I began looking for the source of the leak, and it only took a couple of minutes for me to find it. When we redid the bathroom, the contractor used a plastic elbow to connet the copper water line to go from the valves (hot and cold lines) to the handle fixtures. When I pulled on the pipe to turn the spout into the wall without scratching the tile, I must have pulled hard enough to crack one of the plstic elbows. It looked like the leak from coming from the hot water side.
So now the whole issue is on hold until I can figure out how to fix it. But now in addition to fixing the pipes, I believe I am going to need to go back down into the kitchen to fix the cracks from the water damage we had previously had when the original leaks were going on before we redid the bathroom. Un-Be-Lievable!!!!
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