Rather to my surprise, I have managed to change an upstairs cold tap washer this morning. Taking just about half an hour and seemingly successful - it having seemed a touch wet to invoke our home maintenance agreement with British Gas for such a purpose - although such purposes are explicitly included.
The relevant stop cock had not been moved for some years and so started off a bit stiff. A bit nervous about applying the mole wrench to it, but a bit of back and forth soon got it off, or at least enough off for the purposes of changing a washer.
Getting the top off the tap was the next challenge, cracked after only a modest amount of silent cursing. Removing the washer assembly, ditto.
Then we had removing the old washer. Downstairs to the small, naval-avuncular pipe vice for safety and dig the thing out with a small screwdriver.
The replacement washer, of which I happened to have a pack of four from some outfit called 'Do It All', actually fitted. No need for cursing, silent or otherwise. Or for the rather tiresome business of cutting the washer down to size.
Replace washer assembly and test. All seems well, with a nice soft finish. No need to strain the thing at all.
Replace top on the tap.
Wash away all the grot that always seems to attend jobs of this sort.
All finished!
A trivial enough job, but one which seems to loom a lot larger, both with advancing years and years elapsed since the last attempt.
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