Adventures in plumbing

The kitchen sink had been leaking. Where it had been an occasional drip, it turned into a once a minute drip, and then a once every 10 seconds drip.
Intuition led me to believe that it was the hot water side leaking, and since my hot water is electric, this had the potential to be pricey if left unchecked.
While I was at Ian's over the weekend, we stopped by Lowes and I picked up the Moen Torrance Faucet and Sprayer. I had wanted a single handle design, and something that looked a little nicer than what was there.

Let's get this done.

The first thing to do was to get the old one off, which was a bit of a struggle. It had been on there a while. But tools and proper angles won the day, and it came off. The hardest part was getting off the two white nuts that held the old fixture down. There was just no good angle to get a wrench on them easily.

NUTS.
(Also, notice the rust.)

Oh yay! Happy day! It came off! And what did I find under the base plate?
No plumber's putty and rust. Lots of rust.

Old fixture is in the sink in the lower right.
That clear plastic gasket wasn't doing jack to keep the water out.

I had thought this might be the case because of the orange water that would leach out from under the plate when I was wiping up the area after dishes. I had no idea it was this bad though.
I got out the Barkeeper's Friend and a Scotchbrite and got to work.
The problem is that no amount of elbow grease will put back metal from where it's been dissolved.

All the black marks are pitting and pinholes.
The brown is surface rust.

I couldn't be replacing the basin last night at 8 pm, (well, I could, but I didn't want to.)
The intention (foolish as it may be) is to redo the kitchen eventually, so I'm going to try not to worry about it, and just keep the area as dry as possible from now on.

FYI - this faucet, for what I paid for it, was awfully cheap. A lot of the parts are plastic, and just don't feel like they are going to hold up over time. Also, the directions were sort of junk - they completely missed a piece, and were very difficult to follow. I get that everyone's cutting corners, but geez.
I did get it installed, and I'm pretty pleased with the results.
It doesn't leak, which is the whole point, so I consider it a success.

Tada! New faucet.