Off my butt Friday

1. The grill that covers the vent fan in our bathroom was visibly dusty, and has been since, ahem, we moved in. You know how there are some tasks that you know won't be that hard, but you still never get around to them because, let's be honest, you're the only one who will notice if it doesn't get done? Yeah, the vent fan is that sort of thing.

Today I took the grill down, and not only was it dusty, the damn thing looked like a wool blanket had been glued to the insides of it. Ten minutes of high-pressure hosing down later, some scrubbing with a (retired) toothbrush, and some cursing while reinstalling it in the jerry-rigged contraption in the ceiling, and we now have a chance that the air capacity of the fan will be measured in cubic feet per minute instead of per hour. Huzzah.

2. The outside faucet at the back of our house leaks, and it has been dripping since, ahem, we moved in. Last year we didn't notice it much because of how we had the hose hooked up, but it definitely contributed to the swampiness I spent all this week combatting. Anyhow, the faucet is so drippy that it can be measured in gallons per day, so we have been using the shutoff valve in the basement to keep it off except for when we actively need to be using it. Yeah, that's convenient, to have to traipse through the kitchen, family room, basement, and laundry room in order to turn it on or off.

I avoid plumbing repairs, mainly because if it gets screwed up there's a chance it can do major damage to the house, but a leaky faucet shouldn't be too hard to fix, right? I researched it in all of my handyman books, and it looked like you unscrew a couple things, replace some washers and O-rings, and put it back together. No problem. Only, I can't get the damn thing unscrewed. Liberal amounts of WD-40 have been applied, and it's going nowhere. I'm not completely sure which direction it's supposed to turn (sometimes the screws on things that are supposed to rotate go the wrong way so they don't unscrew themselves during normal use), and the slot for the screwdriver is stripping, so I've given up for now. I can't decide if this is a "wait for Dad" or a "just call the damn plumber already" situation. And someone needs to shoot whoever came up with flathead screws, or at least whoever continues to use them now that there are less strippy options.

3. The faucet in our tub/shower has been leaking for the past few months, getting worse virtually daily. You can reduce it to a drip if you really crank the handles down hard, but if Jason is in a fog in the morning and forgets, I find a thin stream of water going down the drain when I get in there. Not good. Add to that the fact that the handles are the ugly chrome-and-clear-plastic variety that have enough mold on the inside to repopulate a small planet, and Something needed to be done.

I succeeded in shutting off the water to the tub (Yay for shutoff valves behind little doors in the closet behind the bathroom!) and getting the handles and escutcheons off, but I can't get the guts of the handles to move at all. I went over to Home Depot in hopes that there would be a magical device for doing what I'm trying to do with a pair of channel lock pliers, but no dice. There are specialized implements for every other plumbing repair job, but apparently not this one. And there are so many different replacement "guts" that there's no way I can figure out what I need without removing the current setup.

Again, I'm not completely sure of what I'm doing, and if I bust something we're going to be showering in the guest bathroom until we get it fixed, so I've given up for now. I'm in the process of bleaching the living crap out of the handles (literally) and escutcheons, and I have to recaulk the area around our sink anyway so I can take care of fixing the funk there, too, but otherwise I'm stymied.

I have definitively decided that this, combined with the drippy immoveable outside faucet, is a "call the plumber already" situation, which takes the burden off of my shoulders. And if we're going to pay to have the plumber come out, I'm not repairing the ugly thing, I'm getting one that doesn't look like the 1980s attacked my bathroom. Now I just have to find somewhere that stocks a three-handle shower/tub faucet combo in an antique bronze finish, get it ordered and get it here, and find a plumber. Oh, and find some cash to pay for this whole party ... sigh.