November 24th - Lesson Learned.......

I know this looks like a faucet.....to be exact, it is a Moen Renzo faucet.

But it is also a life lesson, which I'll explain shortly.

Let me start by apologizing for my absence.....I've been a bit hormonal and didn't feel like sharing the rollercoaster ride with anyone.  In an attempt to improve my mood, I did some housecleaning to improve the view of my home, some shopping to improve the contents of my wardrobe, and spent a lot of time outdoors enjoying the unseasonably warm weather.  I had breakfast at Ikea with a good friend.....visited my Dad, bought some Thanksgiving supplies,  finished my homework for school, and then all of a sudden it was Monday again, and then Tuesday, and now we're into Wednesday and not a peep from me - bad Em.

Anyhow.......I think I'd mentioned that I had a repairman coming to look at my oven....and another one coming to look at the leak under the sink.  Both of those nice gentlemen showed up yesterday.....they both showed up at the end of the 4 hour window of noon to four pm.....and neither one could fix the problem in a single visit.

The oven probably would have been fixable except that somehow they got the wrong information on the ticket....and beyond that, they sent him to my old house first-go figure.  He asked about the symptoms (There is no temperature control - when you turn it on, it goes to uber hot), diagnosed it as a thermostat which he doesn't carry.......so he'll be back on the 7th to install the new part, assuming it arrives next week.  Fortunately, this is only costing me 60 dollars under my home warranty.

That does mean no turkey dinner tomorrow......but since I happened to have a couple of lovely T-bone steaks in the freazer, it's all good....no, I can't bake pies or bread but I shouldn't be eating that stuff anyhow.  Fortunately I'd decided to leave the frozen bird in the freezer until I was sure I had a way to cook it.

Then we move on to plumbing guy.  This is the third different contractor that has come out under my home warranty.  He wasn't quite as amusing as the last, but he was certainly competent enough.  It turns out that the leak is from my kitchen faucet, which is barely more than a year old, sigh.  Faucets aren't covered under my warranty.  However he did take the opportunity to replace my drainpipes from the dishwasher to the wall so I will no longer have to worry about the connection shaking loose and leaking the way it does now.  He quoted me a price of 150.00 to remove and replace the faucet (if he bought a faucet for me it would be another 300.00).....I thought about it for a moment and decided to pay and have the work done.

Granted, I'm pretty good at these things and I probably could replace the faucet myself.....but we're talking about laying on my back in the not very big sink cabinet.....and dealing with a single hole faucet - something I haven't had to work with before.   So  I figured it was worth the luxury of having someone else do it right .

I mentioned that the faucet which broke is barely more than a year old.  It's an offbrand that Lowes sells......in fact if you're a Multiply friend you might remember me blogging about deciding on a faucet when I was having my sink/countertop replaced last year.  I didn't worry about it being an offbrand because of the "Lifetime Warranty".

And there folks, is the lesson learned.  Yes, it's a lifetime warranty.  All I have to do is take the faucet out and send it, along with the proof of purchase, back to the factory where they will repair or replace it forever.

Except that there's no way I can live without a kitchen sink for a few days let alone a few weeks while I wait for it to be repaired or replaced.

So, like the vast majority of people who bought what my plumber refers to as "a piece of crap" I had to go out last night and buy another faucet so that on Friday I will once again have hot and cold running water from my kitchen sink.

I suppose I could have bought exactly what I already have - and then sent the bad one back for repair - and then once I got the replacement, return it to Lowes......but that seems unethical besides which karma would probably kick my ass by having the replacement break in a year.

Instead, I took the plumber's advise and bought Moen.

In the future , I will think before I let "lifetime warranty" convince me to try an off-brand home improvement product - no matter how pretty it might be.