That’ll teach me.

Ever had one of those home projects where fixing makes it worse than it was before?  That was me today.

One of the cheapo faucet handles in the shower broke the other day.  It was working fine with a pair of fliers, but I decided to actually replace it. 

The screw that held it on was rusted, and the valve it was screwed into was a little cracked, I thought it would be best to replace the whole thing now and save me time later when it finally gave in.  $5 in parts was all it should have taken.

Thanks to piss poor design, I’m going to end up replacing the whole faucet.  A little spring in a little hole that press a little rubber gasket onto the back of the valve was gone.  The rubber was shredded.

I went through 3 sets of rubber gaskets and springs, trying to get them into a small hole, inside the pipe, 3” inside the wall through a 1” hole.  All 3 springs sproinged out and fell down the wall into oblivion.

By 3:00 I gave up, stuck a rubber grommet in behind the valve and turned the water back on.  Oh yeah, I have a shower, as long as you want to shower in straight hot water.

First thing tomorrow morning the water is going off and I’m going to start taking things apart.  I have no doubt that I’m going to be swearing a lot, since the faucet has been there at least 20 years, and who knows how long before I moved in.

Wish me luck.