$876.43 + $50= kitchen faucet

So our condo was built in the '80's and everything in the kitchen is from that time. My faucet was falling apart. The handle on the faucet would just spin and spin around and you would have to figure out where the hot water might be. The sprayer was in need of severe help and would come out of the sink in an unhelpful way. So while at Costco, I saw a kitchen faucet for $50. It said, "EASY to install." I bought it. It stayed in my kitchen for two months.

I had a week of visitors to look forward to so I thought it would be a perfect time to fix my sink. Now, I have replaced bathroom fixtures this year and only one toilet paper holder doesn't work. I replaced a closet door, but stained it a totally different color than the other closet door and I hated staining... Two hours after I stained the door, a bird left a deposit on it and it took Kevin a week to help me put it in and now it looks horrible...

So I have had a few warnings to not do things myself. But the faucet was supposed to be easy. As I took the old faucet off, I threw away the pieces so there would be no turning back. When I went to take the main part of the faucet off, I tried to unscrew it under the sink. I tried three different tools. I finally called our all knowing friend Alan and he came over. He took the sink out of the cabinet to get a better view. It was rusted solidly on. And the sink was rusted. And the metal fasteners holding the sink in were rusted and many were broken. So now I needed a new sink.

But we had to take the garbage disposal off the sink and it's fasteners fell apart. And when unhooked, it just stunk.

I went to Home Depot. I decided to get a beautiful deep sink and a really nice disposal and a new faucet... the $50 one didn't seem nice enough now. Well the plumbing for the sink was too high for a deep sink so I had to go back and buy a different sink and then the plumbing expert looked at the pipes I was buying on my third trip and told me my garbage disposal would hook to my dishwasher and I could get rid of one of the pipes so I could use my original deep sink so now I had two sinks and new pipes and a garbage disposal and two faucets. It had been 12 hours and 5 Home Depot trips later. I had Alan come back over. He was figuring out the pipes while I put the sink and faucet in. So I did that part all by myself and you can tell. There is caulk all over the place and the faucet isn't centered. Alan did the pipes and I had to get an electrician over to hook up the garbage disposal.

So I bought a $50 faucet that was to be put in within an hour. $876.43 and 48 hours later, I had a new sink, faucet, and disposal. Of course the disposal makes a funny sound, but I'll worry about that next summer.
(I was able to return one of the sinks so I kept the bill under $1000. I win)