Disasters around the house …

So – the faucets in the kids bathroom have been leaking for awhile.  They are only about a year old, so I have to suspect our mastermind “what can I do to this before it breaks” kid of tampering with them.  First it was the cold water, so we just turned the water off.  Then it was the hot.  When the kids were having to brush their teeth in the tub I figured it was time to fix the faucets.  So, the water being off and all, I took one apart and headed to Home Depot.  Did I mention that one of the shutoff values wasn’t working – wouldn’t turn the water all the way off?  So I bought four “cartridges (two for each faucet) and a new shutoff valve.

The repair of the one faucet went pretty smoothly, except it took me awhile to figure out how to make the faucets turn on and off with the handles in the correct position (didn’t think to look at the the little plastic thingys until I had taken both handles apart).  So far, so good.  Then I went to work on the faucet with the faulty shutoff valve.  Silly me – I figured since it was shutting off most of the water all was good…

See that cartoon up above?  That was our bathroom!!  I stood there, frantically trying to think of something to do before making a mad rush to the basement to shut off the water to the house.  I was soaking wet, but the bathroom was way worse.  There was about two inches of water on the floor, not to mention all the water that was on the ceiling and walls.  Oh yeah and there were bits of waterlogged tissue everywhere, since the toilet roll was obviously getting hit with a fair amount of pressure.  About a third of the tissue rolls stored under the sink were waterlogged, as well as much of the stuff in the drawers next to the pipes.  It was such a mess!!  I used all the towels in the house to mop up the water.  The worst of it was that I did the same thing later on in the evening – but fortunately after I had replaced the shutoff valve.  Andrew raced right in and turned the valve off while I held my hands over the water spout and managed to divert most of it back to the sink.

Why, you may ask, was I so silly as to take the faucet apart when the water was still on?  Well, after I installed the new cartridges and turned the water back on – there was no water!  The one sink worked fine, but the other was dry.  Tom thought it might be the cartridges – so I switched one out from the working faucet.  No dice.  I took the faucet apart about 15 times, trying one thing after another.  One of those times I forgot to switch the water back off.

The problem?  The aerator was plugged up with mangled bits of the old washer.  I finally decided something was blocking the water in the spout and took the aerator off.  The pieces were minuscule, but it doesn’t take much to block the water flow.  For good measure I cleaned the other spout out too.  Then Andrew and I cleaned that bathroom “within an inch of its life”, so to speak and all is good now.