Tried fixing a leaky faucet with youtube, now my kitchen looks like a water park

Last Tuesday I watched a 10 minute video, thought 'how hard can it be', and ended up with water spraying everywhere for 20 minutes before I found the shutoff valve under the sink. The plumber my neighbor recommended fixed it in 15 bucks and laughed at my puddle of shame. Has anyone else had a DIY project totally backfire?

3 comments

3 Comments

lisak261mo ago

Question, did you also forget to turn off the water to the whole house before you started? I did that once and it turned into a full-on indoor tsunami situation while I ran around yelling at my roommate to find the main shutoff.

walker.max2d ago

Actually, you do have to shut off the water to the whole house for this kind of job. There's no way around it. Most houses have a main shutoff valve near the water meter or where the line comes in from the street. Unless you're just fixing a single fixture with its own shutoff, you're looking at the whole system being off. The indoor tsunami part is real though. I've seen it happen more than once, usually because someone thought they could get away with just turning off the sink valve. That's the part where you learn real quick whether your roommate knows where the shutoff is or not.

paul2511mo agoTop Commenter

Was it really that bad or are you exaggerating?