Once when I was doing dishes at my in-laws’ house, their garbage disposal splash guard came off. Eric and I ran to Lowe’s, got a new one, and put it in with no trouble. So, when our guard began shedding chunks of itself, I thought the fix would be a slam dunk. I mean, I don’t want to brag, but Eric and I have replaced the ‘boot’ to our washing machine TWICE (by watching a YouTube video). I truly believed it would be a five minute deal.
That was my first mistake. I literally thought, “Oh, I’ll just slip this in here real quick before I clean the sink.” I have never, in my 43 years of life, had a home improvement project take five minutes. I’m not sure what possessed me to believe it this day, when we were both working like fiends to get the house cleaned for company. Stupid. I know that now. But, on this day, I was just going to “pop it in there” really quick. I pulled and pushed on the old guard. Not budging. I skimmed the box of the new one--who READS directions when you can skim?--and it said just shove it into the hole in the sink. I did that, but thought, “Hhmm, that doesn’t seem right.” It wasn’t tight enough to stay put, and came out easily when I pulled up.
At this point, I decided the problem was the old ring. I put on rubber gloves, grabbed, pulled, tried to shove a bread knife between the rubber ring and the metal of the sink... that sucker wasn’t going anywhere. Eric came into the kitchen to grab something and said, “What, are you doing that right NOW?” I chose not to respond. “Look it up on YouTube,” he told my mind-your-own-business face.
So, I looked it up on YouTube. Seriously, you can find EVERYTHING on there. I found a short video, which involved removing the actual disposal. Nope, not doing that. I went back to pushing, pulling and prying. By now, I had pulled off just about every sliver of “guard”. Staring down into the gaping hole, I realized Bob the Handyman had a point: I needed to remove the disposal.
Bob showed how you could easily loosen the disposal, slip off the old ring, slide on the new one, and reattach. He forgot to mention the thing weighs about the same as a toddler elephant. In addition, maybe there are plumbing fixtures more difficult to reach and maneuver than a garbage disposal, but I have never worked on any of them. This project seemed to require removable body limbs. I was all arms and knees and feet, but nothing could get at the splash guard while holding the disposal up at the same time. So, I did what any amatuer handyman idiot does when he/she has made a stupid move--called for reinforcements.
To say Eric wasn’t happy would be an understatement. I’m fairly certain explicatives were exchanged on both sides. The actual conversation need not be repeated. Just please realize that I WAS wrong, and stupid, and I KNEW that, but it was a little too late to go there. Because the thing was heavy, and it was already disassembled, and now pipes from its side were completely OUT and they smelled like rotting flesh and three-day-old vomit. I’m pretty sure that creepy goo-stuff from “Stranger Things” was in there. Anyway, I digress.
Eric pretzeled himself around me and the cupboards and held the disposal, while I removed the ring, realized the new ring would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS fit the spot because it was considerably smaller, reattached the old crappy ring, and tried to put the disposal back on. Again, our exact conversation need not be repeated. One or the other of us may have passed out from the smell. And, we could NOT get it back on.
Generally, at this point, the Halls contact our good friend, Jim. He comes to save us in times of desperation like changing a tricky halogen light bulb and putting a folding closet door back into its groove. The good news is he doesn’t charge $75 for coming out, like the plumber who showed us there’s a switch on the garbage disposal if you ‘blow its fuse’. So, we contacted Jim with our Batsignal (he’s off the grid, people; don’t bother trying to look him up). No response. We were in serious trouble.
Finally, we did what we Halls do best in situations like these: we shoved it REALLY HARD. Believe it or not, it actually worked. We got that sucker up there and I twisted and it was back in place! I put the new splash guard in from the top, like it was supposed to go (even though I still don’t think it looks right), and we were in business! Until we weren’t.
After washing the sink, I noticed we had a drip. Okay, a leak. A big leak. A going-to-rot-the- cupboard-if-left-alone leak. We repeated the explicative-blame argument and tried pushing and pulling some more. Then we watched Bob the Handyman together and noticed, “Hey, that metal thingy there is way closer to this metal thingy here in Bob’s video.” Eric grabbed the screwdriver, I pushed up with my pinkies (nothing else could reach), and we tightened that baby until it’s metal thingies touched.
A week later, still no leak. Sure, our splash guard has to be pulled out each time you want food in the disposal, but no flaps of plastic are going in, and no water is shooting from the bottom. Progress. But if you need a home project done, I wouldn’t summon us with your Batsignal.
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