I shut off the water supply to the refrigerator. I didn't remove the back cardboard panel and you can access the water valve from there. You don't need special tools to make the connections but you will have to remove small locks for the push type settings by pulling them out and save them for reuse. The higher quality valve sold here is what you want if you have hard water because quality o-rings will last longer. I also had to defrost the freezer door and get rid of all the extra ice that had accumulated from the water overflowing. To repair took about a half hour and then about an hour to do the defrost of the freezer door and remove the extra ice from the ice maker. No more water leak and the ice maker is working normally now.