My bathroom faucet was leaking. Does anybody know where this is going yet? Most sensible people would call the plumber, or the landlord, as it were. Am I sensible? No, I like to do things myself! I like learning!
I had read a tutorial on fixing a leaking faucet in ReadyMade Magazine a year or so ago. I vaguely remembered it when the drip started becoming intolerably loud at night. I have realized over the mere four months that I've lived in this apartment that I am one of the only people in this building who calls the landlord for anything. So I thought I'd just give him a break, and use my rudimentary secondhand knowledge of plumbing to help him out. What a great tenant I am!
I unscrewed some of the parts of the faucet one lazy afternoon to take a look at it. Well, it didn't exactly look like the faucets in the article, but it couldn't be rocket science. I put it back together and went to the hardware store. I talked to one of the associates there, who told me to just replace the whole thing. No thanks! Rubber 0-rings cost next to nothing, and I wasn't about to replace the whole faucet for the landlord. I bought a wrench and went back home.
So a few days later around midnight, because that's the best time to work on your plumbing, I turned the water lines off and began disassembling the faucet again. All the parts were laid out before me, and I crouched down below the sink to fiddle with the plug mechanism. Confusion set in, as I all at once realized a) there was a very loud sound, b) I was freaking cold and c) it was raining inside my bathroom. Anyone who hasn't been drenched in a matter of seconds cannot understand how long it takes to realize what is happening, haha.
I popped up and saw a geyser of frigid water shooting out of the place where the knob had been. I stuck my thumb into the hole to plug it while I frantically scanned the bathroom for the missing piece. I couldn't reach it, so I went back down, getting wetter by the moment, to shut the water line valve all the way off. Apparently, I didn't do a good enough job with that before. The water had bounced off of the CEILING and all over my bathroom, soaking everything in there, including my Tammy Faye Bakker-looking self. After mopping, hanging my clothes up, and draping things over my radiators to dry off, I put my faucet back together. And called my landlord.
Everything dried out overnight, but the crappiest part was my sink was EVEN WORSE after I tried to "fix" it. The maintenance guy came a few days ago, and he was in there for ten minutes and now it's working perfectly. LEAVE IT TO THE PROS. If I keep this up, I'm gonna have to rename my blog DIY Disasters. <3
