The Sink Switch
This is the tale of when our house revolted. Threw in the towel and called it quits on us. Remember when I mentioned briefly that during our Staycation at the beginning of the month, we had a bit of a leaking problem? Well, today you get the whole story. Scratch that. It’s still progressing, so you’ll get the parts of it I can tell you to date.
About two months ago, we noticed that our downstairs hall closet was starting to smell a little musty. It was that kind of smell that starts out small and then you notice it in full force every single time you open the door. We couldn’t figure out what it was. It’s not like the coats were wet in there- it hadn’t been coat season for months and they hadn’t been used, let alone taken out into the rain and put back in damp. We tried airing it out by leaving the closet door open and opening the doors and windows of the downstairs so that fresh air could get in. No luck. It just got worse and worse.
The final straw was when I took down a few place mats from the top shelf and noticed that there was MOLD growing on them. Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck. It was then that we decided to take everything out of the closet to see what the issue was… and found that the ceiling had definite water stains and was soft to the touch… uh oh.
After calling my dad, he walked us through where to look for the leak upstairs… in our case, it turned out to be the upstairs bathroom sink. Long story short, one of the sink hoses had been leaking- constantly dripping- causing water to seep down through the cabinet floor, down the wall, and into the downstairs closet ceiling. The thing is, this hose must have been leaking for MONTHS because everything was completely soaked through. Even the ceiling beams. Nothing ever had a chance to dry out because the sink had been consistently leaking.
Obviously, we had to do something about it… not only did we have a sink to fix, but we now had a closet to de-mold-ify (that’s an official term) and repair. The first step? Stop the leak! We turned off the water source of the upstairs sink until we could order a new faucet for the bathroom. This is where the story gets a little bit happy… remember that moodboard I created for the downstairs bathroom? You can see the full post here.
Well, we’re looking to change all of the hardware in the downstairs bathroom to an Oil Rubbed Bronze finish… the current faucet in there works just fine… we were going to have to buy a new faucet regardless to replace the upstairs one… see where I’m going with this?
Essentially, we figured that we could kill two birds with one stone if we removed the downstairs faucet and relocated it upstairs to replace the broken one AND purchased a brand new ORB faucet for downstairs. Everybody wins! This is the one we picked out from Home Depot…
We ordered it on Friday and it came in the mail early the next week, all ready for installation!
The first step was removing the downstairs faucet… I’m not going to go into the nitty gritty how-to. There are directions that come in the box for that and let’s be real, you’re just interested in the befores and afters. #iknowyou 🙂
Basically, as we unscrewed parts, we made sure to pay close attention to what we were doing so that we could re-do it upstairs.
The one tip I do have is this: make sure you have plumbers’ tape and plumbing silicone on hand. These will help tighten and reinforce your joints to avoid any leaking. Which we were keen to do, as I’m sure you can imagine. Excuse the blurry picture… essentially, all you do is wrap the tape around the threads of the part that will be screwed in before you attach it.
So, here it is… the downstairs bathroom with its original sink…
And the brand new oil rubbed bronze one!
As for upstairs, we just saved all of the parts and took out the old and replaced it with the “new”! Before…
And after!
Not a whole lot of difference on first glance, but let me tell you… there is no leaking and that is VERY IMPORTANT difference. 🙂 The next step was is remedying the moldy drywall in our hall closet. I’m in the last few stages of that project, so as soon as it’s finished, you’ll know. Believe you me.
Until then, I wish you a good day and ZERO LEAKING. In every sense of the word. 🙂
