Patrick Madden

I’ve realized it takes a lot of time, money and hard work to be a world-class cheap ass.

For example, the faucet in my bathroom has been leaking for – I don’t know – about five years give or take a year. The cheap man’s solution to a leaky faucet is to completely ignore the problem, which I did successfully for the past five years. But recently the leak turned from a slow drip into something more akin to Niagara Falls, so I decided this problem finally needed some attention.

Now I am no plumber (unless you count the ability to clog a toilet) but after a little research on the Internet (aka the cheap man’s enabler) I saw that leaky faucets can often be fixed by replacing the “seats and springs“, which is basically a rubber gasket with a spring that sits inside the faucet’s handles.

Now the cheap man gets excited about a fix that is going to cost him a few dollars instead of the obscene amount it would cost to get new faucet, so after consuming a few Youtube videos on the topic, I jumped right in and began to take my faucet apart.

And, of course, I ran into my first problem immediately upon starting – I had no idea what brand of faucet this was.

My bathroom faucet is a nondescript item; made of cheap chrome and cheaply designed in such a way that if I had to guess, it retailed for around $5 in 1987. There was no indication of the manufacturer anywhere on the outside (probably by design since no one would want to be associated with this piece of crap) and was generic looking enough that it was impossible for me to track down even with the help of the internet.

The closest representation I could find online was this thing of beauty from Kingston Brass (although mine had different handles and was clearly an older model):

But this small problem was not enough to slow me down. I had removed the seat and spring from the hot water handle*. I could simply go to one of those big box home retailers and match up the old seat and spring with a new one from the store using my keen powers of observation.

Not surprisingly, that failed. Despite having a wall dedicated to seats, springs and various other faucet repair products, neither of the two stores in my area had seats and springs that looked anything like the one I pulled from my faucet.**

While my first attempt at identifying the faucet turned up empty, I had read online that faucets can sometimes have their identifying information stamped on the bottom. I was hesitant to completely disconnect the faucet and pull it out on the small chance that the brand was somewhere underneath, but I was getting desperate.

After disconnecting and removing the faucet, the only thing I found was about five pounds of plumber’s putty stuffed up inside it. The bottom was complete devoid of any information about the manufacturer or the brand. Or maybe it had been there at one time only to have been assimilated by plumber’s putty in the intervening years.

At this point, with the faucet completely removed, the cheap man inside of me broke down and asked my wife if we should just buy an entirely new faucet. While this idea cut against my core beliefs, my wife had been bugging me for a while to replace that faucet*** and I had just done half of the labor involved in putting a new one in.

Not surprisingly she said yes, so I ran out to the store and bought the cheapest faucet I could find, an AquaSource Two-Handle WaterSense for $25 on clearance. It wasn’t until I got home that I started reading reviews and discovered why it was on clearance – it’s apparently a leaky piece of junk.

Now I may be cheap, but I’m not a complete idiot****, so instead of installing the faucet and having it leak on me within the year, turned to the Internet again and ordered a Price Pfister faucet online that received better reviews (and sadly, was more expensive). There was one small problem, however, the faucet was a special order item and had to be ordered and shipped from the warehouse. Approximate arrival date – 4 to 10 business days.

A total lack of sink in the primary bathroom is perfectly acceptable for me (I can just brush my teeth in the kitchen sink, see problem solved), but it’s an inconvenience for most normal people, so I reinstalled the old faucet temporarily until the new one arrived. After hooking everything back up, I realized why an entire drum of plumbers putty was stuck all up in the old faucet – it leaks like crazy from the bottom without it.

Damn.

So I’m currently without the use of a faucet in my bathroom while I wait for my new faucet to arrive. And a $2 set of faucet seats and springs slowly and painfully turned into a new faucet. Approximate cost of this fix in time and money:

New faucet – $50
Plumbing materials – $4
Number of trips to the store for parts – 3
Hours spent uninstalling and reinstalling an old faucet that doesn’t work and will eventually need to be removed again – At least 2
Number of Youtube videos watched on leaky faucet repair – At least 10
Time spent researching faucet repair on the internet – Way too damn long
Number of bathroom sinks that currently work – 0

Like I said, it takes a lot of hard work to be this cheap.

More on repairing a faucet leak
Video on how to fix a leaky faucet

***

*It was a two handle sink and the hot water side was leaking, which apparently is the more common side to start leaking first.

**This is the point where I could have went to a plumbing supply shop and begged for help if there was one in my area.

***In her defense, it is a butt-ugly faucet that was leaking.

****Just a partial idiot.

With the kitchen behind us, it was time to move on to a few smaller house projects that could be completed in less than a weekend. One of the fun things about being married is the ability to disagree on nearly everything, including the tiniest, most insignificant things in life. Our house was no exception. In general, the things that bother me and that I want to fix are completely different than the things on my wife’s list.

Take our bathroom floor. It was a puke-blue colored* linoleum that – if I had to guess – was original to the 1970′s house. I hated it as much as anything in the house. On the other hand, it didn’t seem to bother my wife all that much. At least in relation to all the other things she wanted to fix.

But since it was a relatively easy project, I decided I was going to update the floor. I should have gotten a good picture of the old floor, but all I have is the out of focus one below.

I could have, and maybe should have, replaced the floor with ceramic tile. But I was a hesitant because I’ve never done tile before, so I instead went with vinyl floor tiles that mimic the look of ceramic tile. On the positive side, they are inexpensive, easy to install and look pretty good out of the box.

According to this old house, vinyl tiles come in two varieties: glue-down tiles, which are set into a bed of mastic, and self-adhesive tiles which are a peel-and-stick. I bought the peel-and-stick kind which literally meant peel off the backing and then stick to the floor. There were a few tricky cuts around the edges of the room, but the tiles can easily be cut with a razorblade, so even a non-flooring expert like me had the entire floor down in less than a couple hours. It really was one of the easiest things I had done to the house.

Here is what the finished floor looked like.

While my decision to go with vinyl tile was primarily based on 1) ease of installation, and 2) cost, one of the nicer things about vinyl compared to ceramic tile that I’ve grown to like is that it has a slightly warmer, softer feel under your feet (which is a very good thing during cold, Maine winters). It was very easy to install and in the 3+ years since we’ve put it down, it was been very durable.

Since installation, the largest negative thing about the tiles is that they have yellowed over time (well, all except one tile, which makes the floor look even stranger. So my slate colored floor now has a distinct yellow hue to it. I’m not a fan of the color change, but it still looks way better than the old puke-blue stuff.

Overall, I’d recommend vinyl tile. It’s not going to fool anyone into thinking you have actual tile on your floor, but I personally think the look is step up from traditional linoleum sheets. I’m not sure what’s up with the staining of my tiles – maybe it’s the brand or maybe I should try cleaning up after myself once in a while – but it’s not so bad that it’s a deal breaker.

*Puke-blue: It’s a royal blue base with flecks of brown, silver and orange in it, like someone puked all over a royal blue floor…. coming soon to a Crayola box near you soon.