I the plumber fixed the dripping shower in my master bathroom last night all by myself. I have replaced shower heads or toilet fixtures, but I hadn’t messed with things of this nature, so I had meant to call a plumber after cleaning up the bathroom and bedroom nice and neat. That was four or five months ago. My place now is messier than ever and the dripping had gotten worse. So much worse it kept me awake at nights, and so a few nights ago I fastened a string on the shower head so that the water drops would catch it and follow it down. It worked a little until I started to hear little splashy kinda noise which bugged me like hell. I had to fix it soon.

I went online and looked at pictures, instructional videos and all kinds of how-to write-ups. They all seemed so complicated and they were all a little different from each other. Even though they all say it’s very easy, I couldn’t get the basic information I needed such as how to find out what kind of valve I have. The instructions start like “If you have a cartridge type valve…” and so forth, but I couldn’t find out what to look for to determine if it’s a cartridge type valve or not. So I was very very nervous.

However, it turned out to be just a piece of cake. I dropped by at Home Depot on my way home from work, went to faucet repair/remodel kits section, and there it was – Delta shower faucet replacement cartridge for model 1300 and 1400 series. I was nervous that something would go wrong like the old cartridge wouldn’t come out fully or the replacement wouldn’t go in or some such cases in which I would have to call the professional, and since I didn’t want to pay the emergency fee, I would call them up next morning and until then I wouldn’t be able to use water. So I prepared myself by going to the bathroom and spending a long time sitting on the toilet if you know what I mean.

Then all I had to do was to shut off the water, uncover and unscrew the shower knob off, take the metal sleeve off, loosen the brass ring (nut) off, and pull the cartridge out, push the replacement cartridge in, turn the water back on, adjust the scald guard setting and finally put the knob back on and screw it in and put the knob cover on. I know. If I had read instructions that went like this I wouldn’t have understood  what I had to do. But it was just that easy. The only tool I needed was a screw driver. I spent only like 30 minutes, most of it spent on pulling the cartridge out because it’s kinda tight and on adjusting the scald guard setting to get the temperature right. And all it cost me was 37 dollars and some change for the cartridge as opposed to a couple of hundred dollars if I had called a plumber.

Now I’m contemplating on fixing the downstairs toilet leak…