The Plumbing Saga of the Bathroom Sink

Art's bathroom sink had been leaking slowly for a while. He'd thought of working on it before when he was fixing the leak at the kitchen sink, but that exhausted him so much he decided to wait on his bathroom sink for another time.

The time had come.

He stared at the fixture for a while and then went down to Home Depot to pick up another faucet set. Unfortunately, they no longer made that style so it would be different from my sink but he figured he could just change my faucet fixture also later.

Taking off the cold and hot water handles took all day. They were rusted solid and just wouldn't budge.

I won't go into the terrible lengths we had to go through to get them off.

OK... That was done, but now the spout would NOT come off. Everything was rusted.

That locking nut for the spout was totally rusted to that top plate so the spout couldn't be removed from the sink counter. Art had gone down a second time to Home Depot and bought a basin wrench to try to unscrew that nut. Nope. Didn't work either. 

It was now into the afternoon. Dinner time. Mom likes to eat at 5:00 on the dot so we had to stop and decided to just grab carry-out from Panda Express.

Would you believe that on the way there some giant bird (it had to be gigantic) let loose his bowels on our windshield Unbelievable! 

We figured that was the end to a crappy day.

That evening we texted our problem to our plumber friend who said he could come over to help.

"No..." we said. We can handle this tomorrow.

"Too late," texted his wife. "He's on his way with some tools for you.

Our plumber buddy arrived in 10 minutes with an array of tools and a can of liquid wrench. He also brought papayas from their tree and some homemade kim chee to cheer us up.

More importantly, he gave Art some hints on what to do next. The last resort he said was to use the saw and cut the nut off.

And so our day ended on a high note with our spirits lifted and hopeful. Art used the liquid wrench he gave us to soak the nut and shaft overnight.

The following morning we found that the liquid wrench did not work.

We were now down to that last resort.

Art used a hack saw to painstakingly cut off the stubborn nut.

It took over an hour.

He had turned off the water to work on the sink but when he went to turn the water back on at lunch time he discovered to his horror...

...a horrendous leak at the water heater. We were devastated! Totally bummed! We'd now have to go down to Home Depot and buy a new water heater. Arrrghhh!

I went online and saw that it could be the pressure relief valve. Since he'd had to turn the hot water on and off several times, it must have built up some pressure. Whatever the case, the leak stopped. I have no idea what that all means, but that's what happened.

OK....

So now he's got the entire fixture off and it was time to look at the directions for the new faucet fixture. Could it be the home stretch?

Would you believe....no? The drain stopper would NOT go down flush to the sink bottom. When we compared the old and new stoppers (flange) we discovered that the old flange had a little smaller diameter and therefore could fit in the ceramic sink hole. I felt around that hole and thought I saw and felt a hard metal ring that was the cause of that problem. 

We were feeling pretty depressed and Art had plans to go back to the hardware store for a smaller flange the following day. We gave up and started dinner.

That's when the doorbell rang. It was our plumber buddy. He was checking up on our progress since they were in the area. He told Art that it wasn't metal but a plastic ring to create the mold for the ceramic sink. It can be cut out.

That was hopeful.

Early on the third day of this saga, we discovered that our plumber buddy was totally correct. Good grief! That hard ring could be cut out with an X-ACTO knife.

Oh my gosh! It worked! The flange slid right in and was secured.

As you can see, now our faucets don't match.

Art had considered replacing my faucet so they would match.

He thought about it for 5 seconds and then said, "Let's let sleeping dogs lie."

(Or "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.")

Oh what the heck! Diversity is good.