The Dripping Tap

The basin tap in the bathroom has been dripping for some months, but nothing serious until recently. It’s got to the stage now where it’s more of a trickle than a drip and sometimes the water tracks down underneath the basin and on to the bathroom floor.
My plumber told me ages ago that, as it’s leaking from the top of the tap, there is nothing that can be done other than replace the whole tap. And because the tap is nearly 20 years old, it’s highly unlikely I could find a direct replacement, so it would no longer match the bath taps. And that’s why we’ve lived with the drip. Until now.
As there was nothing to lose by taking it all apart, I stripped it down this morning. And I reckon that a new cartridge should cure the problem, rather than a whole new tap. Screwfix do one for under £5 but further investigation revealed that although it was the right diameter, it was the wrong height. I can get the right one off eBay for a similar price, but it wouldn’t arrive until the end of next week.
As I’ll want to brush my teeth tomorrow morning, there was nothing for it other than to reassemble the tap. But what I did do was thoroughly clean all the bits before reassembly, and make sure everything was properly tight to ensure there was as good a seal as possible.
And there has been a definite improvement - I haven’t seen any obvious water seepage over the last few hours. But I’m still going to fit a replacement cartridge next week as I’m not happy with how much I had to over tighten everything to get the dripping to stop - any tighter and I reckon the thread would have stripped. And that would definitely result in a whole new tap being required!