An attempted bathroom J-trap cleaning turned into replacement when old equipment proved too worn and rusty. Removal of the old gear took over an hour including scraping and scouring off soap scum rings. Shut off the water supply valves under the sink and if they leak then turn off the main house water supply valve before you start.

I paid $78USD for the replacement kit at Home Depot and the sales clerk was helpful. I choose the Glacier Bay kit, the Home Depot brand, because my sink is small. Kit is the faucet, handles, drain and stopper assemblies.

First install faucet body, making sure you orient the gap in the gaskets to the rear to allow the stopper rod to pass through. This was NOT in the instructions and I didn’t notice until after both handles were installed.

I had to remove one handle to remove and reinstall the faucet with the proper gasket orientation-and then reinstall the handle.

Handles are next and I found a open/box wrench (UK:spanner) was handier than a Crescent wrench in the cramped space. The blue dot is for cold water and the red dot for hot.

Two people would have made this job easier since the handles tended to rotate when tightened.

Apply silicone caulk to the drain flange and attach to the drain pipe, making sure the opening for the ball rod faces to the rear. Then the stopper lift rod, and plunger and ball rod is installed (the linkages that raise and lower the sink stopper).

Next the connecting hose is snapped into the faucet and handles; and the hot and cold water supply lines are attached to the handle connections.

Remove the aerator from the faucet body and run hot and cold water for at least a minute to flush out any debris and identify any leaks. This is important as my rusty pipes flushed out lots of trash that would have soon clogged the strainer.

I had an extra complication in that the supplied drain pipe was both too short and too narrow for my existing J-trap. Another trip to the store where the helpful hardware man steered me to an extension tube and adapter gasket ($17) that worked as advertised.

So if you have average manual dexterity and hand strength, and the ability to crawl under a sink and stand on your head, you’ll be able to do this job in only a few hours, barring the sort of screw-ups and complications that usually dog my DIY home repair projects. 

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