This week we had a couple small, DIY-scale projects, one electrical, on plumbing. Of course the small designation is usually slapped down by the actual execution.
The electrical flavor was our new-ish GE Advantium microwave oven. It was beeping and displaying the F3 error code. Fortunately, it was on a circuit all its own, so a trip to the basement to trip the breaker solved the bleeping beeping problem. Google led us to some pages that explained we would need to replace the front panel.
There was DIY advice on the web explaining how to pull the unit from the wall (its a built-in) and access stuff from on top. My back had been bothering me so wrangling the unit was daunting. I decided to leave this repair to some pros. Two guys showed up on Thursday with the new part, but they had little clue how about this model. They poked and prodded a while. Once I supplied a printout of the web page instructions, they were able to get it in gear and make the repair.
The plumbing project was motivated by a leaking ledgeback facet in our bathroom sink. A plumber had previously told us that he could not get replacement parts (washers) for this old model. Maybe that was bull because we do have a good local resource in Watertown. But I went online again to Locke Plumbing and found a suitable replacement.
The challenge here turned out to be getting the old facet apart. There were some hard to access cotter pins holding the pop-up assembly together. I ended up disconnecting the water supply and drain pipes and removing the sink from the wall. The one-hour estimate from web DIY advice turned into maybe two-plus hours. I drew blood twice, once a nick on my forehead from dropping a tool on my face as I lay on my back looking up at the work site. Once again a typical knuckle scrape. It's not a real project unless you bleed a little.
The job did give me an excuse to buy one new tool: a basin wrench. If you need one, nothing else will do. This really helped on the reassembly. I also got to use an old tool I picked up a long time ago on speculation: a little double-ended right-angle screwdriver.
Everything seems to be in order, except the handle above the facet to the pop-up doesn't quite fit in the hole provided in the porcelain sink. It is quite hard, but not impossible to pop the pop-up up and down.
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