Big Spitter

Operation Heart of the Home – Big faucet replacement edition

Our kitchen has two sinks. One big, one little. And with two sinks comes two faucets. Ours came with two very gold faucets. Bada boom bada BLING.

We already replaced the smaller faucet…you can read all about that heart pumping adventure here.

So now it was time to address the big one. This previous faucet was a Moen four piece with a sprayer.

I wanted something a little bigger (to fit bigger pots under it), with the sprayer in the head and a single control (I’m not very good at calculating how much to turn the faucets to make it that just-right temperature. ridiculous. I know.) Jeremy asked that it have a magnetic pull down head.

After we went to Lowe’s, we narrowed it down to the following three. There were only three out of fifty that fit our criteria and didn’t resemble a vibrator…I’ve seen pictures…mom :)…

In the end we ended up choosing the Pfister Wheaton faucet because it looked the best to us and the price was right.

So the kitchen was tiled and you can see from this terrible photo below that we didn’t have the old goldie faucet anymore.

When we removed the spigot part, it came out pretty easily. The handles however were another story. Those suckers were rusted in and STUCK.

Here’s how they looked from underneath the counter….more rust.

The first thing we did was try to loosen it with a pair of pliers. Ha. That was a joke.

Then we read about spraying WD40 on the rust and letting it loosen up the rust. That worked a little.

Then we decided that Jer would take a wire brush, remove any little bits of rust evident and then spray more WD40.

Then we got mad and whipped out the big guns.

Not literal guns.

Shooting that in close proximity would be dangerous. Ricochets happen.

Now if you were a good shot from far away and could promise not to ruin my backsplash, well, that’s another story.

We used the MultiMax tool with a metal cutting blade. There are two blades – the round half moon one (pictured below) and then there is one that is a small rectangle…both are good. Use the rectangle one if space is limited.

This is the best pic I could get with both of us under the sink (remember I was nine months pregnant) and trying to get the saw.

Eventually Jeremy got through the entire bottom section of the bolt and then could go at it to cut through the nut.

We figured out that after you cut through the bottom part, you can hit the bottom with a hammer and it will pop right out.

Then we installed our new faucet. Purty, huh?!

Since the faucet we removed was a four hole faucet and the new one we put in was a two hole faucet, that means we have two extra holes.

See mom? I did learned a little sumpin from my homeschoolin’ days.

That’s next. Hole filling.

Mom it’s taking everything in me not to say ‘that’s what she said’ right now. Give me points for that. I’m like the best daughter ever 🙂