Kitchen Faucet Removal for Dummies

What a kitchen sink faucet looks like from underneath

We've noticed over the years that there's a downward trend in the average homeowner's knowledge of what makes a home function. Anyone... well, almost anyone can shovel the walk or change a furnace filter; but some people can't manage to hang a picture or a new curtain rod. Once you get past operating a cordless drill, you lose a lot of people; which is why so many would-be DIYers ask for plumbing help on the internet (never mind electrical work...). With luck, they won't run into "help" from the likes of Jonra Springs, who penned "How to Remove a Kitchen Sink Faucet"¹ at HomeSteady.com.

We submit that it takes someone who's wildly unfamiliar with DIY to need Jonra's help, but if they did try to use it they would have some problems. Springs starts out by describing the supply lines, telling his readers,

"TURN OFF THE WATER SUPPLY! There will be a crank near the bottom of both water supply lines."

If he wants to call it a "crank," we guess that's OK; but first, the "crank" isn't at the bottom of the supply line, it's on the shutoff valve and second, there's a handle on each line, not "near the bottom of both." Oh, and when you have the water turned off, turning on the faucet does not "let the water drain out of the pipes" – if you want to do that, you need to turn off the supply to the house and turn on the lowest faucet in the place before you shut off the supply lines. As for unhooking the supply lines, Jonra says to,

"Place an empty bucket under the connection to catch the residual water in the lines. Hold the upper nuts with an adjustable wrench and loosen the lower nuts with adjustable pliers."

And here we thought we'd already "let the water drain out of the pipes"! As for the loosening bit, Springs has it backward: you hold the shutoff valve stationary and turn the nut on the supply line with a wrench (and what's this fixation with "adjustable," anyway, Jonra?). Now it's time to remove the faucet from the deck (a word Jonra doesn't seem to know), but first, take off the sprayer:

"You'll find connector nuts on either end of the [sprayer] hose. Use the adjustable pliers to remove the hose from one end."

Ain't gonna work, Jonra: you have to disconnect the hose at the faucet, otherwise you won't be able to get it off the deck. That's  the way they're designed. Moving along, let's remove the faucet itself:

"Remove the mounting nuts. Locate the mounting nuts underneath the back end of the sink, on either side of the faucet base. These will either be one--piece [sic] plastic nuts with fins for turning by hand, or they'll be small metal hex nuts over metal caps. Use adjustable pliers, or wrench, to completely remove these."

Gawd, we wish it were that simple. For one thing, you may well need to remove the supply lines before those "mounting nuts" will come off. For another, the space between sink and wall is almost always limited, meaning that you might need a basin wrench, not "adjustable pliers, or wrench" to even reach the damned things. Based on his lack of knowledge about the task and his failure to understand potential problems, we think it's pretty obvious Springs has never actually performed the task he described, instead copying partial instructions from an unknown source. That's why Jonra is, once again, the recipient of a Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_2312404_remove-kitchen-sink-faucet.html

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