How to change your kitchen faucet in 44 easy steps

Step 1: Finally make time to change the faucet (a few hours should do it).

Step 2: Go to Menards, buy new faucet on clearance for 40% off.

Step 3: Wait two weeks. Then make time to change faucet.

Step 4: Clear cleaning products from cabinet beneath sink and get lightheaded from the mélange of cleaning fumes.

Step 5: Inspect damage to cabinet bottom from leaky faucet.

Step 6: Clean inside of cabinet. Make as homey as possible because you’ll be living in there for two or three days (unbeknownst to you then).

Step 7: Gauge how you’re going to fit in there with pipes and garbage disposer (your new neighbors who will repeatedly hit you on the head).

Step 8: Shut off water.

Step 9: Disconnect connectors, have water spill into clean cabinet.

Step 10: Clean up water.

Step 11: Get one wrench and one screwdriver from your toolbox, thinking this is all you should need.

Step 12: Attempt to remove old faucet, realize nut is rusted to mounting plate and won’t budge. Also realize you don’t own a wrench small enough to fit in the three inches of space you have to work in, and the screw driver is an unnecessary item.

Step 13: Get Liquid Wrench from toolbox to loosen nut. It frees even the hardest of bonds. Try to defy gravity by squirting it UP at the rusted nut. Squirt wall instead.

Step 14: Climb entirely in cabinet, squirt again, get oil all over your chest.

Step 15: Exit cabinet, wiggle faucet in hopes it loosens nut. Wiggle more.

Step 16: Get hammer from toolbox.

Step 17: Go back inside cabinet and pound nut with hammer. Get rust, old caulk, and other debris in hair, eyes, and mouth.

Step 18: Exit cabinet and wiggle faucet again. It moves!

Step 19: Get every tool you have from tool box.

Step 20: Use all your tools, especially your hammer, to try to pry faucet off. Won’t budge. Plead with faucet. Then beat with hammer.

Step 21: Start to believe your faucet was manufactured by the devil himself. Curse it to damnation.

Step 22: At a loss, play with copper connectors, bend this way and that, because you don’t know what else to do. Get idea.

Step 23: Start bending sections of faucet until they break, feel like you’re making progress. Only a stump remains.

Step 24: Try to remove nut again. No dice. You’ll have to saw the faucet off from above.

Step 25: Go to parents house at 3 a.m. and get hacksaw. (Learn from dad two days later you took an antique butcher saw used to cut through bone.)

Step 26: Put “hacksaw” to faucet base with vengeance and start moving arms real fast, knocking things off your countertop.

Step 27: Old faucet finally breaks free. You’ve won!

Step 28: Go to bed filthy, leaving your kitchen in ruin.

Step 29: Wake up with severe back pain.

Step 30: Mount new faucet. Test strength. It wiggles. Tighten. Still wiggles. Curse the new faucet. Tighten again. Still wiggles. Accept that you have to buy a better faucet.

Step 31: Go to hardware store, return faucet (it wiggles, you tell the clerk), buy another (more expensive) faucet.

Step 32: While at hardware store, convince yourself a sink-mounted soap dispenser would be convenient. Buy that too.

Step 33: Return home, mount new faucet. It looks nice. It’s sturdy.

Step 34: Attempt to install connectors to water lines. Heart sinks when you realize two things: 1) The connectors don’t reach. 2) The connector ends are bigger than what will fit on your water lines.

Step 35: Go back to hardware store. Buy connector extensions and adapters.

Step 36: Return home. Run lines all over your cabinet and install connectors.

Step 37: Turn water back on. Test for leaks. Thank goodness for small favors, there are none…from your faucet. You’re disposer is now leaking, which it wasn’t before this endeavor.

Step 38: Go back to hardware store.

Step 39: Return home, plug leak in garbage disposer.

Step 40: Time to install soap dispenser. Open box, drop soap dispenser on floor, breaking it. Put back in box, go back to hardware store, return it. You didn’t need it anyway.

Step 41: Pat yourself on the back. You’ve done it.

Step 42: Achieve new levels in household cleaning and clean your cleaning products.

Step 43: Put your cleaning products back under sink, promise yourself to keep it organized, put tools away, clean up kitchen. Turn faucet on and watch it run. It’s practically the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen.

Step 44: Open fridge for something to eat, and see your fridge is leaking.

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