Plumbing is Officially My Least Favorite DIY Project
God, this weekend was absolutely awful.
So here’s the deal… We have two-handled faucets in our shower. They’re currently the cheap clear plastic ones that are really tacky looking. We wanted some pretty nickel fixtures instead, but finding two-handled ones is actually pretty difficult; the standard faucet setup tends to be the one-handled kind. Specifically because we did NOT want to have to mess with the plumbing, we decided to spring a little more for two-handled faucets instead of going for a one-handled one that would require some plumbing alterations in order to work. I found a pretty set online that wasn’t too expensive and ordered two of them. These handles even came with their own valves, which I was hoping we wouldn’t need to put in, since the original valves were soldered in.
Pretty, right?
However, when the handles arrived I thought we should probably try them on the existing valves to be sure they fit before we progressed with putting walls back up; and sure enough, they did not fit, and we were going to need to put the valves in. Plumbing work after all, SIGH.
We were going to start on the shower pan this weekend, but instead realized we had to take care of the plumbing issue first. So we went to the hardware store, bought a pipe-cutter and a bunch of “GatorBite” connectors, came home, cut off the old valves and installed the new ones with the GatorBites. That part went very well, and pretty easily.
We turned on the water and realized that we misunderstood the faucet positions… down was ON, sideways was OFF, and we had it backwards. Of course, we realized this because water came thundering out of the showerheads onto the wood subfloor, flooding the bathroom and dripping down through our kitchen ceiling onto the floor. With much screeching and cursing we got the water turned off, and everything cleaned up. We turned the handles to the actual off position and turned the water back on… now it was fine, no leaks. I started to unscrew the pretty nickel trim on the faucets so they’d be ready for tiling, etc.
Another gush of water, because the nickel trim wasn’t just cosmetic, it was actually holding the valves in place. We flooded the bathroom again. (And realized we’d have to turn the water off when we tiled so we could get the trim off without flooding everything… lesson learned.) We put the trim back on, and cleaned up everything again, and went downstairs to have dinner and commiserate on the couch with a movie. At least we had the plumbing finished, though, right?
Wrong. While we were having dinner I googled the GatorBites, thinking they did seem a little too good to be true. I was right. GatorBites are watertight because of a rubber O ring inside. As we all know, rubber degrades, especially under hot water; meaning that though these little things are super easy to install and lovely and watertight at first installation, over time they would degrade until inevitably they leaked. Every plumber and contractor on message boards I could find said emphatically they would never, never install them behind a wall.
Well, crap.
The next day we got up, turned off the water again, removed all the GatorBites and took them back to the store, bought a soldering gun and soldering supplies and copper connectors, went home, realized the soldering gun was nowhere near powerful enough to do the job, returned it to the store for a soldering torch, and worked for hours trying to get the new connectors soldered onto the existing pipes. We managed to get a thick ring of solder around the connections, but it was really hard, frustrating work… and after finally doing the sixth one and realizing we could pull it right out of the connector afterward, with no actual joint having been formed, I was about ready to pull my hair out in frustration. We couldn’t even turn our water back on for fear of flooding the house again.
At 8:30 PM on Sunday I was looking up plumbers, thinking we were going to have to pay somebody several hundred dollars to come solder six frickin’ joints for us. And finally it occurred to me I really needed to call in the big guns - my Dad.
I called him and tearfully explained what an awful weekend we’d had and how we couldn’t for the life of us figure out how soldering worked. My Dad reassured us this was something we could do, and said he’d come up in the morning to help. So, I took the day off of work, and my Dad arrived in the morning and spent all day giving us a crash course in the art of soldering plumbing connections. We got all six joints done. He even helped us measure and level out the pipes for a perfect height match while we were at it, and make sure they were tucked back far enough into the studs that we could fit our backerboard over it when we build the wall (something that we’d both forgotten to think about.) And at last, we could turn the water on.
By the time we were done it was 3 PM, so Dad went home and Shasta went to an appointment and I vented the rest of my frustration with a nice cardio workout followed by yoga. I’m feeling a bit better today, and back at work, though the day out cost me a lot in terms of catch-up work I now have to get done.
By far the MOST stressful and difficult home improvement weekend we’ve had so far… but at least now we have secure, working plumbing!
So here’s the deal… We have two-handled faucets in our shower. They’re currently the cheap clear plastic ones that are really tacky looking. We wanted some pretty nickel fixtures instead, but finding two-handled ones is actually pretty difficult; the standard faucet setup tends to be the one-handled kind. Specifically because we did NOT want to have to mess with the plumbing, we decided to spring a little more for two-handled faucets instead of going for a one-handled one that would require some plumbing alterations in order to work. I found a pretty set online that wasn’t too expensive and ordered two of them. These handles even came with their own valves, which I was hoping we wouldn’t need to put in, since the original valves were soldered in.
Pretty, right?
However, when the handles arrived I thought we should probably try them on the existing valves to be sure they fit before we progressed with putting walls back up; and sure enough, they did not fit, and we were going to need to put the valves in. Plumbing work after all, SIGH.
We were going to start on the shower pan this weekend, but instead realized we had to take care of the plumbing issue first. So we went to the hardware store, bought a pipe-cutter and a bunch of “GatorBite” connectors, came home, cut off the old valves and installed the new ones with the GatorBites. That part went very well, and pretty easily.
We turned on the water and realized that we misunderstood the faucet positions… down was ON, sideways was OFF, and we had it backwards. Of course, we realized this because water came thundering out of the showerheads onto the wood subfloor, flooding the bathroom and dripping down through our kitchen ceiling onto the floor. With much screeching and cursing we got the water turned off, and everything cleaned up. We turned the handles to the actual off position and turned the water back on… now it was fine, no leaks. I started to unscrew the pretty nickel trim on the faucets so they’d be ready for tiling, etc.
Another gush of water, because the nickel trim wasn’t just cosmetic, it was actually holding the valves in place. We flooded the bathroom again. (And realized we’d have to turn the water off when we tiled so we could get the trim off without flooding everything… lesson learned.) We put the trim back on, and cleaned up everything again, and went downstairs to have dinner and commiserate on the couch with a movie. At least we had the plumbing finished, though, right?
Wrong. While we were having dinner I googled the GatorBites, thinking they did seem a little too good to be true. I was right. GatorBites are watertight because of a rubber O ring inside. As we all know, rubber degrades, especially under hot water; meaning that though these little things are super easy to install and lovely and watertight at first installation, over time they would degrade until inevitably they leaked. Every plumber and contractor on message boards I could find said emphatically they would never, never install them behind a wall.
Well, crap.
The next day we got up, turned off the water again, removed all the GatorBites and took them back to the store, bought a soldering gun and soldering supplies and copper connectors, went home, realized the soldering gun was nowhere near powerful enough to do the job, returned it to the store for a soldering torch, and worked for hours trying to get the new connectors soldered onto the existing pipes. We managed to get a thick ring of solder around the connections, but it was really hard, frustrating work… and after finally doing the sixth one and realizing we could pull it right out of the connector afterward, with no actual joint having been formed, I was about ready to pull my hair out in frustration. We couldn’t even turn our water back on for fear of flooding the house again.
At 8:30 PM on Sunday I was looking up plumbers, thinking we were going to have to pay somebody several hundred dollars to come solder six frickin’ joints for us. And finally it occurred to me I really needed to call in the big guns - my Dad.
I called him and tearfully explained what an awful weekend we’d had and how we couldn’t for the life of us figure out how soldering worked. My Dad reassured us this was something we could do, and said he’d come up in the morning to help. So, I took the day off of work, and my Dad arrived in the morning and spent all day giving us a crash course in the art of soldering plumbing connections. We got all six joints done. He even helped us measure and level out the pipes for a perfect height match while we were at it, and make sure they were tucked back far enough into the studs that we could fit our backerboard over it when we build the wall (something that we’d both forgotten to think about.) And at last, we could turn the water on.
By the time we were done it was 3 PM, so Dad went home and Shasta went to an appointment and I vented the rest of my frustration with a nice cardio workout followed by yoga. I’m feeling a bit better today, and back at work, though the day out cost me a lot in terms of catch-up work I now have to get done.
By far the MOST stressful and difficult home improvement weekend we’ve had so far… but at least now we have secure, working plumbing!