Hi, first time poster here with some questions. I bought a house a year ago, it's built in 1940. One of the bathrooms had a leaky tub and shower faucet, and water was also dripping down the wall from behind the escutcheon plates of the handles. I tackled this as a first time plumbing project by initially trying to replace the o-rings and washers on the stems of the handles. It didn't seem to completely fix the leaking, so then I went and got new stems and replaced those. The issues that I have (you can see in the pictures) are:
1) the escutcheon plates dont screw flush against the wall, and I feel that part of the problem is that the pipe for the cold side sticks out of the wall a little bit farther than the hot side. If I can't get them to just screw on flush, do I just caulk around them?
2) the spout is not flush either, but I had taken the old one off and put a new one on, screwing by hand, until I couldn't. I figure I could probably twist it around farther with a tool to get it flush (or close)...but do I also caulk this if it's not flush?
3) The handles, I feel, are a problem. To begin with, one of the main problems beside the visual leak down from the handles, was that the handles were hard to shut off, and even then, water still dripped out of the spout for some time. Even since I put in new stems, on the hot side the handle is loose (wiggles) and it butts up against the escutcheon plate because of pipe position out of the wall, where as the cold handle still has space between it and the escutcheon plate, even though it's screwed in. I don't feel like the teeth in the hot handle sit well on the new stem, or even the old stem, and that the handles need replaced...but I cannot find these handles anywhere, as I don't know the model. I can't find these handles online, or in the Danco parts catalog in a store, or anywhere. I'm going to try emailing the pictures to Kohler, but I figured I'd try here too. If I've replaced the stems, and get new handles (or get the current ones to work well with the stems), I shouldn't have anymore leaks, should I?
1) the escutcheon plates dont screw flush against the wall, and I feel that part of the problem is that the pipe for the cold side sticks out of the wall a little bit farther than the hot side. If I can't get them to just screw on flush, do I just caulk around them?
2) the spout is not flush either, but I had taken the old one off and put a new one on, screwing by hand, until I couldn't. I figure I could probably twist it around farther with a tool to get it flush (or close)...but do I also caulk this if it's not flush?
3) The handles, I feel, are a problem. To begin with, one of the main problems beside the visual leak down from the handles, was that the handles were hard to shut off, and even then, water still dripped out of the spout for some time. Even since I put in new stems, on the hot side the handle is loose (wiggles) and it butts up against the escutcheon plate because of pipe position out of the wall, where as the cold handle still has space between it and the escutcheon plate, even though it's screwed in. I don't feel like the teeth in the hot handle sit well on the new stem, or even the old stem, and that the handles need replaced...but I cannot find these handles anywhere, as I don't know the model. I can't find these handles online, or in the Danco parts catalog in a store, or anywhere. I'm going to try emailing the pictures to Kohler, but I figured I'd try here too. If I've replaced the stems, and get new handles (or get the current ones to work well with the stems), I shouldn't have anymore leaks, should I?
