Home Repair Day

With only one kid in the house, and not much going on, Tia and I slept in before heading out to breakfast. She almost didn’t want to go since the sun was shining. She kept mentioning that it was a good day to ride, but I managed to get her in the car and we headed to The Egg and I. I don’t think we’d ever been there and it was fantastic. Hot coffee and great food. We might not hit IHOP again.

Then it was off to grab my father-in-law and hit the hardware store. He called us a couple days ago and said that his faucet was leaking, so we had planned to get some parts today. He wanted to fix it, and we were happy to help him get parts. Once again Tia wanted to head home, but we went to Home Depot first and grabbed some plywood, a new faucet, and a few misc parts.

Then we headed back to the house. Tia wanted to ride, and with snow forecast for later, she wanted to go. We also needed to cut the plywood to fit around the bottom of the cabinet. The other particleboard bottom was ruined, so we opened up the garage and fired up the bandsaw to get the wood cut. My father-in-law had measure things, so we notched the corners and cut holes for the pipes. We also had to split the board since the pipes weren’t on an edge. We drilled holes for dowels that would help put it back together later.

Then it was back down to his townhouse. We removed the old bottom and then the drain to try and get the new boards in there. It was some finagling, and we realized that the pipes were angled, so our holes were slightly off. I should have planned for that, but I hadn’t. So I headed back to the house while he removed the old faucet. I grabbed the drill and jigsaw and headed back. I redrilled the bottom and it lined up.

We installed the new faucet, which was surprisingly easy. There were no joints to sweat, just some clips to get the sprayer on, and a few nylon nuts to tighten down. The instructions were just pictures, no words even. I got things hooked up, or really my father-in-law did while I handed him parts. I was glad to not be the one under the sink since my knees were slightly sore. We turned on the water and things seemed to be fine no leaks.

Or we thought. We started to get the bottom in, lining up dowels, and I think we bumped the shutoff valve as it was started to slowly leak water. We managed to tighten it back down without messing up plywood, and I hope that’s all it was. It seemed fine when we watched it for 5 minutes, and then it took us another 10 minutes or so to get the dowels lined up and together.

Overall it went pretty smoothly, with the only issue being we left the hammer under the bottom and had to slip it up to get the hammer out. It doesn’t quite line up as our plywood was slightly thicker, but it looks OK.

$120 or so and a good part of my afternoon to fix it. I’m sure a plumber would have been more, but it was a good project to complete with my father-in-law.