Lol I love that your wife thought you hired someone, that's the best review you can get for a $52 weekend project. I left mine bare for like 6 months and they got gross from steam over the stove, so I finally rubbed some mineral oil on them and it helped a lot. Seal them now if you're anywhere near where you cook, trust me.

This is the same story as every "simple fix" in life. You fight something for hours with force, make it worse, then some guy walks in with the cheapest tool on the truck and pops it loose in ten seconds. Happens with stripped screws, clogged drains, tangled Christmas lights, all of it. We always think more muscle or more money solves the problem, but usually the answer is a tiny dumb thing we overlooked. The $180 was not for the scraper, it was for knowing where to put it. Painful lesson but at least your faucet lived.