Calgon, Take Me Away

Do you remember those old commercials? I pretty much thought when I was a grown up I would get to take baths and all my troubles would melt away. Alas, as an adult I am actually fixing the tub so I can use it at some point.

My sister and her husband recently sold their house and bought a fifth wheel to live in so that they can hit the road and start traveling in a couple of years.They are both quite handy so it didn’t surprise me when she posted on Facebook about all of these things she had fixed on her home after a massive water leak. I was feeling inspired! Yes, little sister, you inspired me to try to fix my leaky bathtub faucet.

I watched a few YouTube videos and was convinced I could take care of the pesky leak myself. So, I stopped at the big orange home improvement store and looked at all of the cartridges for the shower. I chose a Danko that said it was compatible with the Moen 1225 cartridge.

Still feeling like Superwoman I headed into the abyss under our house to turn off the water, came back upstairs and was able to remove the old cartridge without any trouble.

I then placed the new cartridge. It took me far longer than it should have to get it in place. When I finally got it put back together and the water turned back on…..it leaked worse than when I started…plus I hadn’t lined everything up correctly so the hot and cold were in the wrong places.

Back to the spider filled darkness to turn the water back off where I smacked my head on the very short door, and back to the bathroom to remove the cartridge…which I managed to break and could not remove. Are you a person that does crossfit? I am imagining something like pulling a tractor or doing those big rope things or maybe flipping tires. What I attempted in that bathroom to get that cartridge out counts as a crossfit workout. And I couldn’t remove it. Neither could my husband. We called in a local guy who had an actual cartridge remover and it took him about 15 minutes to get it out.

At this point I had gone to another local home improvement store and purchased another of the same exact cartridge which I then managed to place correctly. Unfortunately, it is still leaking but not quite as much. So, I called our regular company to come take a look at that and our upstairs sink to see if he could fix it. I paid him seventy bucks for him to tell me to call Moen and see if I could get a part from them. He said it is still leaking because the knockoff isn’t quite right. As far as our sink goes he suggested getting rid of our pedestal sink and putting in a vanity because the price of fixing the at least 25 year old stems would not be worth it.

Aye, yai, yai…I have called Moen for the part and it is being shipped, we are going to look at vanities soon, and I have learned my lesson. I don’t need to be Superwoman when there are talented, trained people out there who can fix the things that need to be fixed. But, I am still proud of my Superwoman sister and myself for trying.