"Ugggh, it smells like farts in here."

This last weekend Matt and I picked up a new bathroom faucet.  I had found one online that I was in looove with, but at $198.99, it was about $100+ more than we wanted to pay.  We wanted something that was classic and a bit vintage looking, since the bathroom was pretty modern and we wanted to make sure the new bathroom blended in with the rest of the house.  Unfortunately, Matt goes crazy for anything modern, so he was of course instantly drawn to this faucet:

I was not a huge fan, but since I normally veto his choices right away, I gave in and we brought it home with us.  When we opened the box Sunday night, we both figured it would take about an hour at most to complete the switch (which is why we started at 8:00pm).  Here's why:

Only 4 pieces?  This will be a breeze.  Yeah, not so much.  Here is the original faucet:

We were going to leave it, but the little knobby thing on the back of the water spout was too close to the mirror and then the frame would not fit...and also all of our bathtub hardware is shiny instead of brushed like the old faucet...and I'm a freak about things like that matching.

First step was to turn off the water underneath the sink.  The second step was to remove the old faucet and plumbing.  Here is Matt doing that.  There weren't any instructions on how to remove anything, so we winged it and hoped for the best.  The handles simply pulled off with a little help from a Phillips screwdriver:

Then Matt used his muscles to twist off the bottom pieces of the handles:



And when muscles weren't quite enough....

Once the handles were off, Matt had to crawl underneath the sink to take apart the drain pieces that were holding the faucet spout and drain in place.  My job was to be quiet and not criticize while he was cramped under there...I did a B- job of it.  I did stuff myself underneath to get a few pictures though:

That green tagged piece is what attaches to the hot water handle.  You can see the cold water one in the background.  The gold pipe goes up and attaches to the drain.  In order to get the drain off, we had to take off the white "U"/ backwards "J" piece...which caused a minor panic when I pulled on it and water started coming out, but it was just a little water that had settled there when we turned off the water.  Here is what we found in the white pipe:

SICK!  But not anywhere near as bad as I thought it could have been...seeing as I am known to just wash any and all stray hair down the drain instead of wiping it out.  Here's the shot of the drain being out:

The next couple steps involved me thinking I knew how to install the drain and ripping pieces of it out of Matt's hands when he tried to help, which resulted in him walking away from me for a few minutes.  And then I broke a piece of the drain....and called Matt for help.  We figured out that we could still install the drain and it would work just fine (thank goodness) and I taught Matt a lesson to not walk out on me in the middle of projects, so take that!

The faucet handles slipped right into place and attached to the water lines below without any problems.  Same for the faucet spout.  Taking off the old drain and putting in the new one were the most time consuming parts of the project, so our "one hour project" ended up taking almost 2.5.  But check out the new faucet!

Whoa!  Who is that sexy, glasses-wearing, roughed up, sweaty, post soccer game goddess in the mirror? :) (yikes)

Like the faucet??  Once it was installed I loved it.  All my previous reservations about it being too modern flew out the window and I think Matt definitely made the right choice.

~S~