- Hello, my fellow DIY remodelers!
Jeff here again today and we're doing the finishing touches
on this bathroom here, and we have this little faucet here.
We're going to be changing this trim kit out here
'cause this is old and nasty and this is all the original
from when this place was built in the 1970s.
Sometimes, if you're looking at your trim kit
and you're wondering, well, if I wanna replace it,
how do I know what brand this is?
(upbeat pop music)
Sometimes you can just snap a picture of your trim kit there
and post it on the plumbing forums
and somebody there will know who it is.
Sometimes, you can just search on Google Images
and look at all the different shower trim kits
that are on there and that'll help you identify 'em.
But anyway, in this case, we know what we've got
so anyway, they're all just assembled
essentially the same way.
There's only so many ways you can attach
a shower handle and a trim kit.
So what I'm gonna do is go right in here
with my screwdriver and flip this off.
Okay.
And then that will reveal
inside the middle there a flat-head screw.
So I just happen to have
a flat-head screwdriver here handy with me
and we're gonna unscrew this.
And once we've unscrewed that sufficiently enough,
you should be able to pull your handle off.
So that will now reveal your other two screws there
that you need to unscrew to get off your trim plate
and then pull that sleeve out.
Most of the trim kits that you buy come with this
and the sleeve and a brand new handle.
Sometimes, the handles might look slightly different
but whatever handle you get, you gotta make sure it will fit
onto your stem right there for the shower valve.
Now let's say, if you're doing your remodeling here,
this is usually a good time
to go ahead and pull out that cartridge and change it now.
Let me remind you, you gotta make sure your water is off
before you're doing this because sometimes,
people could put something together not quite right
and then put that final clip in
or whatever that holds the valve in
and it can come shooting out with all the water.
And if you're in a condo, where now you gotta go try to find
where is the water cutoff for your building,
now you're in big trouble.
So it's always a good idea to cut off that water first.
Don't ever try to pull that cartridge out
without having your water off
and without testing it first to make sure
that there's no water coming out of here, okay?
Okay, so I've pulled off the sleeve there.
Now, if you look real close,
you'll see that looks like a horseshoe clip
that's coming on either side of the stem there
and the top of it is here.
So once you cut off the water,
when you turn off the main water to your house,
you would use a pair of pliers
and pull this clip straight up
'cause that clip is what's retaining it
in place under pressure.
It's under whatever, your 60 pounds of pressure PSI
of water pressure is behind that.
If you were to pull that clip up right now
and you didn't turn off the water first,
you're gonna get a gusher (imitates gushing water)
and guess what, no human is strong enough
to push the valve back in there
and get that clip in there either.
So you'll really need to get that water off first
if you're gonna do that and change that cartridge.
Okay, so now we're gonna unscrew these two screws
to remove that plate.
Now also, before we take off the plate,
we need to cut all of the caulk
that they put around this thing.
You have to slice that first
before you can get the plate off.
Alright, well guess what?
Upon closer examination of the discussion plates,
it says right there, this is a Moen.
And I thought it looked like a Moen
because I've done a few Moens in the past
and typical signature of a Moen
is we see these two on the bottom here
and a notch on the top.
That's typical of the older,
I would say this is probably their Chateau Series
from back in the '70s or '80s, most likely the '70s.
Alright.
And here's the other way we tell is
after we've pulled off this guy,
the sleeve and the escutcheon plate,
and we look real close in there, you can see inside there...
Now, you can see that is what it looks like inside
the hole balancer right there, the mixing valve.
If you were to buy a whole new shower mixing valve
and everything and the shower head
and all that stuff as a kit,
normally, you'd have to have a plumber come in
and there's four pipes.
These are three or four pipes here soldered in
that you can see all the way around that.
The plumber would have to come in,
maybe open this hole up a little more
and he'd have to unsolder everything there
and then solder in the new mixing valve.
So now you can have a much more modern,
hopefully more improved shower valve
than what the builder gave you
'cause the builders usually give us just garbage.
Total, total garbage, the cheapest of the cheap.
But anyway, so in this case here,
what we're going to do is just
put our brand new trim kit in.
So we're gonna go and see,
sometimes your Home Depot and your Lowe's
doesn't have these older things.
They may have a replacement that's close
but the important thing for you to look for here
is that hole pattern.
You see those two screws
and that keyed hole on the middle there?
Those are the things you need to look for
because see, those two screws, they mount right there.
See the two holes right there under the valve?
That's where those two screws go for.
And that slot that you see here and the ring here,
that slot, what it does is it fits
over the top of that retaining clip.
See it right there,
it's just barely sticking up a little bit?
But it's enough that it needs a keyed hole here.
So that's what makes this specific.
You don't just go to Home Depot and buy a universal fit.
Don't ever buy anything that says universal
because there is no one-size-fits-all,
especially for showers and trim kits
because of the propriety nature
of these designs and everything.
So this is only gonna fit one, see.
And if they don't, then what you do
is you take your kit and everything,
you take a couple pictures of it
and you send it to one of your local plumbing supplies.
You can Google plumbing supply, your county,
wherever your county is,
and it will come up with a list of local places
that you can start calling to see
if they carry a newer version of this trim kit
and then the tub spout that matches.
Now, to remove the tub spout,
normally, if you look underneath, there's a set screw
that you have to undo but in this case,
we don't have any set screws here
so what I'm suspecting is that this was a screw-on type,
meaning that there's a threaded,
some type of threaded device inside on the pipe.
So we're going to cut the caulk with our utility knife here,
we're gonna slice all the way around here
and we're going to loosen up all that caulk
and see if we can unscrew this.
Hey, by the way, I wanna show you something stupid
that I wanna make sure you never do.
What do you see wrong here with this picture here?
Do you see anything wrong in there when you look at here
and when you look right there?
Well, what we see wrong here,
and this is something I tell people
when you're caulking your trim kits,
never caulk on the bottom.
This guy caulked all the way around.
You can see he caulked all the way around the edge.
You always leave like an inch on the bottom
where it's not caulked
because should water ever somehow
find it's way back in there and it needs an exit,
that's where it would come out.
So same here in the bottom of the tub spout,
he should never have caulked all the way.
I had to dig and dig and dig to get it undone there.
You should always leave it on the bottom uncaulked
so that if water gets inside there,
it can drip out the bottom.
That's bad form to do it the way these guys did.
Some people, they just don't think when they do stuff.
It's just amazing.
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Yup, see, I was right!
This is one of those threaded types.
So they had the copper pipe coming out here
with the Teflon tape on the threads properly
like you should have it
and then this just screws right on to it.
So this is the other thing you gotta make sure of.
When you get the tub spout,
and hopefully you can get it all as one kit
so you're making sure you're getting the right thing here,
but whatever tub spout you get, you gotta make sure
that this is the proper length
because this thing is set and it's fixed.
This can't be adjusted without you having
to bring out a torch and change it,
you'd have to cut the pipe
and put on a new adapter here and all that.
So whatever one you fit in there, it's gotta be exact.
So you measure this distance here
and then check on the package
and make sure that that's the distance
that whatever spout you buy,
that's the distance it requires to have.
So essentially, you wanna stick your tape measure
down in there and see how far it is
until you meet the threaded hole,
that screw (mumbles) down there,
and that's what you gotta look for on the one that you buy,
that it's exactly the same distance.
So that's another crucial point.
Otherwise, you'll end up screwing this thing
and you can end up short of the wall.
You'll end up like this, going, hey, wait a minute,
I'm in all the way, what's going on?
So that's another engineering disaster that can beset you.
You can see what a joke of a tiling job these guys did
when they tiled this originally.
Probably better to just put all the tiles in
and then drill a hole,
a one-inch hole or something around it.
That's typically what we do.
This is why I don't like these one-inch tiles.
I do 12 by 24 tiles and I just drill a hole
in the middle with a tile saw
and everything just comes out perfectly there.
And we also use KERDI Membrane gaskets
behind it before we tile so that this copper pipe
is normally poking straight out through the rubber gaskets
so that water can't get back in and go inside the wall.
By the way, one other thing here,
we opened up the wall here where we took the plate off,
we can smell cigarette smoke coming out of there,
just is brutal.
That's because right next door is the lady
that smokes like a chimney
and we have a link that I'll put down in the description
to another video we did that we showed
how we completely had to seal off
this whole end of the house
to keep the smoke coming in from her unit.
So pretty expensive and labor-consuming engineering failure
to have to deal with but it has to be dealt with.
Here, I turned on the light for you.
So you see that clip?
There's a clip that comes down,
it's a U-shaped clip that's right here on the top.
I'm not gonna pull it out because obviously the water
would shoot out at me
but that's very indicative of the Moens.
They have this.
And that's why you have that notch.
See that little notch out, sticking in?
That's why you have that hole here in the escutcheon plate
because the plate and the sleeve fit
over the top of that little notch.
So that's pretty much how you tell it's a Moen.
Alright now, I wanted to show you this.
This is the new tub/shower trim kit
that we got from the store.
Yeah, these are cheap, it's plastic.
If you wanna go pay $100 for the Moen,
go ahead, that's fine too.
So anyway, what's cool about this one
is we look for that hole pattern
that we know is exactly what we're looking for.
The two holes at the bottom right here,
the two screw holes plus the notch right there
on the top of the hole.
And this kit is interesting because it comes
with a couple of other center hub plates
in case your hole pattern is different.
What if you have a Moen that's like that
where your screws are diagonally across from each other
instead of along the bottom?
Well, this one, this center hook here would pop out
and this one would go in.
And they have another pattern too, very similar,
a little bit bigger notch up on the top.
So this one plate will actually handle
several different series of Moen showers here.
And they come with a couple of different
adaptor pieces in there
and this rubber gasket that goes behind the plate
and it pushes against the wall
and it prevents any water
from getting inside behind this thing.
'Cause you know, when you shower,
let's say this is against your shower wall,
when you shower,
water can get behind this unless you seal it.
When I'm done, I always brought a bead of silicone
around the edge, okay?
And the kit also comes
with a clear plastic handle or a metal handle.
You can use either one.
And I always go with a metal one
'cause it looks a lot classier,
even though a brand new one
with the plastic acrylic ones here, the knobs,
it's still much pretty decent compared to the yellow one
that you're pulling off;
however, the metal one looks more modern
and it just looks a lot nicer looking,
a lot classier looking
So we're going to go ahead
and get this installed on there now.
So we have the gasket in place
on the back of the escutcheon plate.
And now, we're going to put the escutcheon plate back on.
And remember, the notch goes up to match the notch up
that's sticking right up there, the clip.
Alright, so you just slide it right on there.
And now, it's just a matter of taking your two screws
and aligning them to the screw holes
that are way back in there and screw it into place.
Okay, so now we have it all tightened in.
Now, we can insert the sleeve into the center hub.
Now, the package comes with two different sized sleeves,
the smaller one and the larger one.
We, of course, are using the smaller one
and it just slides right in there.
Remember, it's keyed and you push it straight back
to where it stops, and there you have it.
And then we'll put the handle on.
The only issue here is now by going for this fancier handle,
you traded off simplicity of installation
with a little bit more complexity.
So here's the regular handle,
similar to the one we pulled up
and you just pop the cap, put the handle on,
and there's a screw that goes right through
the middle end of the spindle.
But with the handle, that's a little different
because there's no hole on the front, right?
So what they do with these,
this gets attached on to the spindle
on the front of the shower faucet there.
And once this is in place, and it'll be sitting like this,
then the handle will fit over that adaptor piece there
and we can screw it in from underneath.
So you would have little set hole screw holes right there.
So we'll put the screw in there
and attach it with that Allen wrench
which is included with the set.
Okay, so now we've tightened the adaptor
onto the front of the spindle there.
And now, we'll put the handle onto here
and run a set screw in.
And the set screw will go through the handle
and into that little hole right there.
So we just need to make sure whether we have the right one
because there's two of these that come in the kit
and each one has a different range of motion.
So we'll see which one of these
does the correct range of motion for us
once we get it connected.
If this one is not right,
then we'll switch over to the other one.
So now, here's the handle
and you see that vertical slot there on the right-hand side,
that has to coincide
with that vertical standoff right there.
So we'll put it in like that
and you'll see it goes all the way in,
and that will run the set screw into that hole right there.
So here, we've put the handle on
and there's your set screw right there that we've started
and we're going to tighten it with this Allen wrench
that came with a set.
And there's the final product right there.
So what started out as an old, ugly pull knob shower here
has turned into something a lot classier-looking.
Then next, we'll upgrade the tub spout
and we'll get rid of this ugly, old shower head up here.
We'll do that in another video.
We're going to replace this with a massaging shower head.
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Have a great one!