More Power
5After a tough day spent pretending to be a plumber and all but giving up and turning it over to the professionals, I just made a discovery. When something is stuck and you can’t get it loose, a sawzall is the ultimate plumber’s wrench. If only the batteries lasted longer.
/giphy more power
Had I started with the destructive approach to removing old faucets, I could have been done by lunch. I hope this tip helps someone else avoid torturing themselves underneath a sink for hours.
Anyone else have unconventional home improvement tips you care to share?
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You should have asked. Sawzall is the go to in all big problems, Dremel for the small ones.
Sawzalls work to make every job a little more fun. They can even help with bad divorces mwahahaha
And always keep extra batteries!!! 6 is my minimum.
/giphy sawzall fun
I recently replaced the kitchen faucet. Remembered to turn off the water and was able to disconnect the plumbing lines. Could NOT for the life of me get the ‘clamping nut’ holding the faucet onto the sink off- no room for any sort of wrench.
Ended up disconnecting the drains & disposal and pulling the whole damned sink out. STILL couldn’t loosen the nut (all the brass was corroded but good); had to cut it off with a Dremel tool.
That was not a happy day
@compunaut This was my situation, except I wasn’t about to remove the sink. Couldn’t get the nuts free on either valve or the faucet itself, even with vise grips. Sprayed PB blaster and then got high on the fumes, still no luck. Told future mother-in-law she was going to have to call in a plumber, then found a sawzall in the garage and told her never mind.
Cut everything straight across as close to the sink as I dared, and went to work with a hammer and a screwdriver and about an hour later (much of that waiting for the battery to recharge) the sink was rid of its outdated control interface. It helped that the sink was cast iron so i was comfortable taking my frustrations out on the valves with the hammer.
What I didn’t share was that after getting all that in, I discovered that the supply lines that were integrated into the new faucet were about 3" short of reaching the new shutoff valves I had to install because the old stuff was all soldered copper pipe, and of course all the stores were closed. So we had to pack up and leave with her still not having a working sink.
I had a similar experience with my friend’s GTO. We were trying to replace his headers, but no matter what we tried, we could not get the driver’s side header out of the engine bay. Problem fixed with a sawzall.