monster sarcasm rally

Continuing on with the dishwasher saga...

I stopped at a little hardware store on my way home from work yesterday. Water spurting all over the place (probably) = busted o-ring. I bought a pack of o-rings and headed home. I popped the spigot off and sure enough, the o-ring had split.

Oh, but wait... The spigot probably shouldn't have that big crack there.

I drove to Rona, spigot in hand. I found an employee in the plumbing section and said 'I need another one of these, please, preferably without the crack'. He showed me the spigots, which ranged in price from $32 to $40. They only had a few and none of them matched mine. Of course, whole tap assemblies start at $25. Wouldn't it be so nice to have new, non-grotty taps in the kitchen, I thought.

I picked out a set and asked the guy how easy it would be to install. No problem, he says. All the instructions are here. It's really easy to do. The only problem I might encounter, he said, was in getting the old set off. The new ones are designed to just pop into place. The older models were glued down. So, it may be difficult to get the old one to come off. Cool.

I buy the set and drive home. I unscrew the taps and pull them off. The base is now detatched, so I try to pull it off. No go. Fine, I thought, it must be glued. Ford and I spent the next few minutes trying to pry the stupid thing off. Eventually, we got it.

Our stupid, antique taps were installed by insane plumbers from outer space.

What I found underneath the taps in no way resembles what it's supposed to. I have no idea what to do next. Now I'm faced with a dilemma: do I call my landlady or do I call a plumber?

If I call my landlady (who conveniently forgets how to speak English when anything needs to be fixed), she will send her son to fix it. He's not a plumber. He probably knows less about plumbing than I do. What he's good at it improvising cheap, half-assed solutions that sort of work. He'll probably duct tape my taps back together. Additionally, my landlady may declare that I cracked the spigot by taking it off, thus beginning a long drawn-out and pointless war.

If I call a plumber, I'll have to pay for the work myself. But it'll be done.

I've said it before. I'll say it again. Grr. Argh.