Tag: plumbing

happenings, home improvement, tragic, venting, wtf?!

my awesome day, starring the hot water heater

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This morning, I woke up like normal, took a shower like normal, and then went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, also like normal. When I walked towards the bathroom door, I stepped in what I thought was a fresh patch of pee, and before I could even chastise Mr. Pickles for ruining my morning, things got instantly worse. James declared that the pee didn’t smell like pee at all, and that is when we discovered it wasn’t pee; the bedroom carpet was saturated with water. Instantly, we figured out what had happened: the hot water heater had leaked, and flooded a lot of our bedroom. After some quick scrambling to see how bad things were, we found that not only had it leaked, but it had completely busted, and all of the 40 hot gallons of water were now resting comfortably somewhere outside of the tank.
Wonderful! Our hot water heater is flooding the bedroom. Awesome!!
A couple of phone calls, and a plumber later, we had spent $1100 and our hot water heater issue was no more.

…Or so I wish.

The floor was saturated, and since this has actually happened to me before, I knew that we needed to act fast, because that water would certainly attract every spore of mold from miles around if it wasn’t dried up quickly. After a clean up estimate that I thought was kind of ridiculously high ($1800), I set out to rent the fans and a dehumidifier myself. Since the pad of the carpet is pretty much a big, floor covering sponge, I decided to just pull it up and throw it away, so that I could increase my chances the actual subfloor might dry in time. I also made that decision based on the fact that carpet padding is pretty inexpensive overall, and the padding that was there was pretty gross upon inspection.
Awesome day 2009! Ugh
As I write this, my bedroom is not a bed room at all. Our bed has been moved to the office, and the carpet has been pulled up, the pad has been cut out, and there are fans blowing wildly in the room that was my bedroom this morning.

Yeah, it could have been worse, but that sentiment hardly makes one feel better when their bedroom floods and they have a day like I did. I’m still trying to convince James that this just gives us a good reason to get hardwoods for the bedroom (which we have been talking about since the day we moved in), but what will happen in the coming days is yet to be seen. I’m hoping that something good can come out of this truly annoying situation; and at this point, the hardwood floors are all I have have to cling to in keeping that hope alive. All and all, a pretty shitty day that I had to use a vacation day on.

flickr, home improvement, listen up!

ikea faucet installation how to: something you need to know

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Oh Ikea… how do I love thee? I could go on forever counting the ways. For me, there is something cathartic about putting together your cute furniture, and a sense of accomplishment that comes along with it that is unlike most other things in this world. HOWEVER (and that is a BIG however), occasionally, you throw a major curve ball at me, and your other customers, and we have to figure out how to make the strange situation work for us.

This is a story of one of those curve balls.

After redoing the main bathroom’s shower and all of the headache that came with it, I refused to go back to using my shitty master bath’s vanity, so I figured I could just “add that on” to the other project. Most of all, it was easy fixes; there is nothing wrong with the shower in our master, and the floor is okay, so I just painted (sassy green!), and thought a new vanity and medicine cabinet was all I needed. For the most part, I have been 100% correct; I am totally happy with all of the somewhat minor changes that I have made. I LOVE the new cabinet, and the vanity is way more compact, and looks way more high end than the one that was in there since we moved in. However (there’s that word again!), I hit a snag when I went to connect the new faucet to the water supply line.
ikea faucet installation: something you NEED to know!
As you can see in the above picture, the lines were just a little too short, but that wasn’t the real problem; the fitting was completely different than the fitting of my previous faucet, which meant that they would not connect to the supply lines.

In fact, it should be stated to anyone that considers ever getting Ikea faucets, that their supply connection STANDARD is 1/2″ (which actually measures 1″ in diameter, which is just odd), not the 3/8″ standard for the United States (NOTE: I could be getting this backwards (but I’m pretty sure I’m not): Ikea says, “Connection hoses with 3/8″ connection included.”, but I’m fairly certain it was a 1/2″ connector at the end of the supply line… regardless, it doesn’t fit.). So what does that mean, exactly? Well, it means that the Ikea supply connections are far bigger than the existing connections that come out of your wall, and well, to put it bluntly, it just won’t work. I found this interesting, because it isn’t mentioned ANYWHERE in the Ikea manual for the faucet.

Hmmm…

So here’s what I did:

First, I googled the situation. I managed to find out that this is only a slightly known issue for those that have ventured into the realm of Swedish flat pack furniture, and lucky for me, there were solutions! So here’s what I had to do…

1) I went to Lowes, and was told they didn’t have what I needed. Don’t waste your time, go DIRECTLY to Ace Hardware, because they have everything you need; which differs from Steve’s (somewhat more complicated, sorry Steve!) solution I linked to above. Here’s what you will need:
2 connection adapters (not sure that’s what they are called); these will be the connection between the Ikea hoses and your new hose. It should be 1/2″ on the Ikea end, and 3/8″ on the other end for the new hose.
2 new faucet connector hoses, standard 3/8″ fittings on each end.

And that’s it!!

Now, here are some pictures, because this is incredibly difficult to explain just using words:
This is the new hose that I was describing with the male/male adapter installed on top:
ikea faucet installation: something you NEED to know!
This will be screwed into the Ikea faucet connector:
ikea faucet installation: something you NEED to know!
Now, the the Ikea faucet is screwed into an adapter, and that adapter is now screwed into a hose that has the standard connector for the supply line coming out of the wall. We’re all set!!!

This is what it looked like when I got everything all in:
ikea faucet installation: something you NEED to know!
$25 dollars and a little elbow grease, and it works like a charm. Now, I don’t know why those hoses start at 12″, causing me to have to snake it around like that, but I don’t care as long as it fucking works, and it does.

So, if you plan on getting a cute little sink, and oh-so-easy to install faucet to go with said sink, be sure to come back and reference this post. It will save you time, because you won’t have to start out empty handed; you can get the adapters and new hoses before you start!

Oh the joys of DIY home improvement… right?! Needless to say, I am more than happy with my “new” bathroom(s), and I can let out a sigh of relief and go back to loving Ikea wholeheartedly (even though I MAY have cursed their name a few points during the project); but don’t even get me started on that weird ass p-trap and the nonsense that went into getting that cluster fuck to work.

UPDATE: It didn’t occur to me to post pictures of the sink/faucet (I was focused on the stress of getting the damn thing installed), but Shan’s request reminded me; so here you go: (I may update this with actual photos of MY cabinet/sink/faucet in the near future, so check back for that)