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2005-12-31 - 10:38 p.m.
What are you doing New Year's Eve??

Why, putting in a kitchen sink! And you?

Stay tuned for a photo essay. But first, backstory.

Our kitchen faucet has been dripping for, oh, a year. We've had the replacement faucet for about that long.

Then the more I thought about it, the more I thought "heck, why not replace the icky old sink while we are at it?" Finally, Husband agreed that since this was a holiday weekend, we'd tackle the job.

Off to Home Depot, where we bought a sink, plumber's putty, teflon tape, and (we thought) enough plastic drainpipe to get the water from our kitchen to Ohio.

So I came home from my lunch with my friend J to find this:

So yeah. We're committed now, aren't we?

We thought we'd spend a couple of hours and be all set. Here's Husband unloading the sink:

I played with putty and put in the drain baskets. We hooked up the faucet and soap dispenser. Popped the sink in the hole and...and....

It doesn't fit right. Apparently, when there was a hold put in the counter for the last sink, there was a little "accident" in the front corner and too much was taken out. It was covered by the old sink, but not so much by this one. And we couldn't just skooch the sink forward because there is some weird supporting piece of wood there.

Huh. Sink comes out. Husband gets the belt sander and sands until we can get the sink in far enough to cover the hole.

Sink back in. Water hooked up. Disposal hooked up. Oh yeah, we are cookin' with gas now. Just need to hook up the drain.

Uh oh.

Old sink had drain in the center. New sink has drains further back. Well, never mind, we have lots of drain pipes, and what I've learned in the world of audio applies here....with enough adaptors, anything is possible.

So we got to this point: (and this is also where LA the Plumber's Wife flips out at the completely not up to codeness of our retrofitted kitchen...)

You will note that none of those ends actually end in any proximity to the others, and certainly not anywhere close to the stub out that would take the water out of our house.

Huh. We sat there for ages, playing with all our different pieces and parts, like a puzzle, trying to figure out how we could make all the loose ends meet and, most importantly, lead OUT OF THE HOUSE.

Finally, Husband went looking to see if Meijer was still open. It was, and he came home with FLEXIBLE pvc drain pipes. YESS.

One small thing. While he was gone, I had fiddled around with the faucet and discovered that the "stops" were wrong. It only swivelled to the center divider in the sink...wouldn't swing over the left hand sink bowl.

Disposal comes off. Sink comes out. Faucet adjusted. MORE silicone on the counter. Sink back in. Disposal hooked back up. Now. On to the drain.

By the way....we WERE going to go to a dance tonight, but we are long past late for that....

Another couple of hours of fiddling. The flexible fittings are a godsend. Nothing in this house is standard, so nothing looks as neat and pretty as the pictures in the instructions. Finally, we dubiously turn on the water.

Nothing. No drips. YAY!

Now the test. Where will the water go?

As you can see from the dejected slump of the shoulders, while most of the water exited the house, there are still some drips we cannot get rid of. Long around 10, we called it a night and went for tacos. It MOSTLY works....the leak is a tiny drip...really a drop here and there. I'm ready to wrap it in duct tape and call it done. I'm sure Husband will tackle it further tomorrow. For now, we can use the sink, and it's PRETTY!

So. No dancing, but a little project together, something accomplished, and a little improvement to our humble abode. So it's ok.

Happy things to you in 2006!

If you're interested.....-2006-11-19

Four years ago.....-2006-09-28

Quick update-2006-09-09

This will be crabby-2006-08-20

collapalooza 2006-2006-08-06