The other plumbing project

I've been complaining about the faucet in our main bathroom sink for a while now (one of those links goes back to 2012...). The handles pointed in the wrong direction, the stopper didn't hold water in the sink, and then a few months ago, the faucet started dripping and our elegant solution was to put a plastic tub in the sink to collect the water for plants.  I was really ready to say goodbye to the fixture.

We'd heard it was easier to replace the faucet structure within the same brand. For a while, we couldn't even figure out what it was, until my mom was visiting and managed to see a tiny "GROHE" on the very back next to the plunger. Bad branding, if we can't figure out what it is when we were trying to!

So after trying to decide between Kohler and Moen, we decided to go with Grohe. Grohe Parkfield, to be specific - it was relatively cheap and relatively stylish. We stuck with chrome to go with the other finishes in the bathroom.

And it remained in this state for a few weeks as we tried to build up enough courage and find the time to take apart the pedestal sink. Until...

Until our garbage disposal broke. It pushed us over the edge to deciding to hire a handyman. And in retrospect, I think it was a sign. We definitely made the right decision by getting someone else to take care of this.

The garbage disposal repair took about 75 minutes. This one, however, took a professional about 3 hours to complete, including multiple trips out for a special tool to remove the bolts. Plus we bought a faucet kit that came in lots of tiny little parts instead of others that come partially preassembled. He actually had to charge us a little extra because of all the time it took to put together.

Yeah, I don't really think we would have had the time and know-how to have done this ourselves...

Apparently the sink wasn't bolted in to tension before and must have just hand-tightened it. The sink always felt a little wobbly. Now though, it's definitely attached.

Look how pretty! The handles point in the right direction! The stopper holds in the water! There's no drip! And the flow is so much better!

It is fabulous. I'm sad we didn't do it sooner. And I think it was worth every penny to have someone else do it for us.

Our new handyman spent almost a whole day here with these two projects. And it was a busy day. We didn't take pictures but we also had a furnace guy here to clean out the furnace. It had been over two years since we had it cleaned out last and wanted to make sure it was in good condition for this winter. The good news is that apparently it was still pretty clean and we could have gone one extra year before getting it cleaned out. Though there was a lot of cat hair inside that we should vacuum out. Good to know!