What home repairs are you working on?

1. Take the Harbor Freight oscillating multitool
2. remove old caulking and crumbling grout
3. Add fresh grout
4. wait 24 hours
5. Caulk everything
6. Test for leaks
7. Replace rotting floor with some temporary 3/4" plywood and put in a new toilet.
8. Wife gets full time job
9. Rip out all decaying bathrooms and replace them
10. Travel more
11. Die

It’ll be a lot easier if you do #11 first.

That’s the worst bucket list I’ve ever seen

I found some grout in my shed I had purchased 18 months ago. That's how long I've been putting this off. Because as soon as I finish, death.

Its not that hard. I’ve done maybe 6 full bath remodels and this way easier.

Also, don’t be cheap. It will cost more over time.

SuperflyTNT wrote: Its not that hard. I’ve done maybe 6 full bath remodels and this way easier.

Also, don’t be cheap. It will cost more over time.

For now I'm just regrouting and caulking the shower pan because it is leaking, and I'm just using plywood on the floor because we going to totally rip everything out at some point in the future, but right now we have a pair of student loans and $16k of home repair debt to vanquish.

Using unbury.me I calculated I can pay off our house, credit card and student loan debt in nine years. Five years after that I retire! Then, death.

Hope your work in the bathroom goes well.

I've got to do a minor plumbing repair soon. I had a slow, intermittent drip in the bathroom sink. It was a low priority because we usually only use that bathroom for the shower, though it is also the convenient bathroom when I have people over for gaming. As of yesterday, the leak became a tiny but steady stream. I figured, no problem, I will just shut off the valve under the sink and fix it. Probably just needs a replacement washer. Unfortunately, the valve under the sink doesn't work anymore, so the only way to shut off water flow to that sink is to shut off the water for the whole house. So I need to time this job for a time when my girlfriend won't be around for several hours, and the plumbing supply store is open. But I only found one that is open on Saturdays, and then only from 8:00 AM to 1:30 PM.

Last year, i picked up a book on plumbing repairs from a used bookstore, in anticipation of eventually facing a plumbing repair. So I did a little reading yesterday, and it looks like I need to remove the hot water handle and then extract the stem to see what kind of valve I have, which washer has gone bad, and to see if maybe the seat needs replacing. There is no way to tell in advance which type I will be dealing with, and I will want to take the whole stem to the plumbing supply store. In theory, this should be very doable, but if I run into a problem that I can't fix, we might need to get by without water in the house for a few days.

Swap out the whole faucet. Get something nice, easy to do, cheap, dependable. Cartridges in old faucets can be a hassle to extract and match.

I like the idea of swapping out the whole faucet, but maybe I should replace the shutoff valve first. That seems like an easier fix and would take off the time pressure on the other repair. The one odd thing about this shutoff valve is that it isn't mounted on the wall, it's in the middle of the flexible hose coming out of the wall. That probably will make for an easier repair.

Cut the valve off under the sink and replace it with a Sharkbite valve. I don't know if these are Professional Plumber Approved, but it makes replacing valves insanely easy. Lowes/Home Depot/Ace all have them.

I'll vote for the Sharkbites as well -- just used one on my main water line and damn, doesn't get any easier. Don't know if it applies in Shellhead's case though with that flex pipe attached to the wall instead. That's something I've never seen.

Someday you'll really want that cutoff valve there. I mean really really want it. In a hurry. That's a good thing to go after if you replace the faucet and if the line is plastic you probably want to replace every ten years just on principle.

Replacing the entire faucet is really pretty easy, and you can get a big upgrade in look and feel for about $60. You also get two new carts instead of just one. The cartridge could stick (like it did in my shower), the pipe the cart is in may be the real issue instead (like it was in my tub) and in the case of my kitchen sink it can sometimes be doggone hard to figure out what model cart to replace it with, as they all look about the same and the code on my kitchen faucet didn't tell anyone what the right one should be. I have two carts at home that don't fit, the third one finally worked. This coming from the manufacturer no less. Made for triple the work, triple the risk and meant my kitchen faucet leaked for two weeks after I started the job.

I took a picture with my phone and went to my friendly local Ace Hardware story. One of their employees is an old, semi-retired handyman who knows a lot about plumbing. He studied the picture and talked me out of Sharkbite. He said that instead of cutting into the flex pipe to put in the Sharkbite valve, I should just replace the existing shutoff valve. He fiddled with the zoom on my phone until he got the picture life-sized relative to my hand, so he could estimate which size elbow shutoff valve I needed.

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Because I need to shut off water to the whole house, my girlfriend wants me to wait until she is visiting her family this weekend. So I might get this and the new faucet done on Saturday. This is my test project before I tackle another plumbing job. My girlfriend doesn't like showering in the basement, so she has always wanted me to upgrade the bathtub on the first floor to include a shower. The previous owners said that there is already piping inside the bathroom wall for a shower head. Anyway, she has some upcoming surgery, and won't be able to lift her arms above her waist for at least two weeks afterwards, so she wants that shower upgrade now. Also, her insurance might not cover enough, so I may need to donate up to $5,000 towards her medical costs, so the shower upgrade needs to be DIY for now.

My original plan was to replace the current tub faucet with one that has a diverter in the side for a handheld shower sprayer. I could set up one of those temporary adjustable shower curtain bars, and then coat the existing bath tiles around the tub to ensure that they are waterproof. I could do this whole thing in a few hours, and for less than $200.

My girlfriend disagrees with my whole plan. She wants me to guess where the shower fixture is and cut out that section of wall, and attach a proper showerhead, and she thinks that the tile coating is toxic and unnecessary. My concern is that I might need to tear up more wall between the tub spout and the shower if the piping isn't actually already in place for the shower, and I still need to replace the spout with one that can divert the water up to the shower spout. If I start tearing out tiles, I might as well tear into the wall and properly waterproof, and then it turns into a really big job that will either require me to call in pros or look shitty because I have limited skills and limited time. So I think I will just execute my original plan and just install an additional holder for the handheld shower to make it low enough for her during her recovery time.

Yeah, if your fittings are fine, then just replacing the valve looks smart, and your guy is right. My (not universal) experience though has been that the valve is okay, but a 20-year-old copper/brass fitting has corroded to the point where water is now leaking out of the fitting. Replacing it semi-old school where you tighten nuts (terminology fail) around a little ring that bites into the pipe and holds the fitting isn't crazy hard, but definitely harder than "push until it stops." I don't want to sweat a new fitting with solder because I'm usually doing this at a weird angle under a sink, and I don't want to set myself or the house on fire.

RobertB wrote: Cut the valve off under the sink and replace it with a Sharkbite valve. I don't know if these are Professional Plumber Approved, but it makes replacing valves insanely easy. Lowes/Home Depot/Ace all have them.

They’re approved in every state for even underground work. I don’t use them unless brazing would be impractical due to tight spaces, but to be fair, my main line into the house has a ball valve sharkbite.

Just make sure to clean the copper or PVC really well so there’s no burrs.