Saturday, October 28, 2017

I have a sink!!!

An hones-to-goodness kitchen sink!

Ok, so it's not a sink in the traditional sense of things. Quentin and I had both been focusing a lot on the word "sink" and scouring the aisles at Home Depot for one we liked that was affordable and would fit into our kitchen well. No dice at all unless we wanted to spend nearly $100 just for the sink!

Then he watched a tiny house video tour on YouBoob and called me up to his computer to show me part of it. That enterprising fellow had taken a stainless steel mixing bowl from Wally World and added plumbing to it and made a sink of the thing! Why not, said we, do similar here? It would only give us one sink and I really wanted two if possible, but a single sink would allow us to dump liquids without going outside in bad or cold weather, including the shower totes when we are done with them, and my dirty dishwater as I could still use my dishpans for the washing up. Honestly, I prefer the dishpans ... don't ask me why, because I really couldn't tell you!

So, we went to Wal-Mart a couple of weeks ago on our usual Thursday night after work grocery run, and got the sink (an 8-quart stainless steel bowl), and most of the plumbing supplies. He got the drain the next day in town at the hardware store, as the only ones Wally World had were the bathroom pop up type and that's not what we wanted. He already had the pipe glue and silicone at the house. So ...


Him playing with his early birthday present/Sweetest Day gift of a saws-all. He's wanted one for a while, but until now, we didn't get him one. He thought he might need it for the sink project but he was able to use his jigsaw instead.


One eight-quart stainless steel mixing bowl - $12


One plumbing repair kit - $20. The drain cost about $5.


Cutting the hole in the bottom of the bowl. He drilled a small hole first so he could get the tin snips started and then got busy chopping out the hole. How did he know it would be the right size? He took the gasket and drew around the inside of it with a marker on the bottom of the bowl so he'd know where to cut.


And the hole is made! One stainless steel mixing bowl sink in the making!


Screwing the drain in.


Putting silicone all around it to keep it from leaking. Mind, since the bottom of the bowl isn't slanted a bit like a regular sink, the drain sits above the bottom of the bowl a tiny bit, which leaves a little standing water in the sink when it's used. Who cares, it dries up pretty quick.


Fitting more of the drain together to be able to add the pipework.


More silicone sealant. He never does this kind of thing halfway.


One finished sink bowl!


Now he's cutting the hole in the door that became my kitchen cupboard for the sink to sit in.


And it fits perfectly!


More silicone on the counter where the sink meets the wood, and the plumbing is assembled. As it's greywater, it just runs straight out to the ground, but we put in the p-trap for keeping cold air from rising up the pipe into the house. It also makes it kind of hard for things like mice to try to get into the house through the drain when there's water sitting in the p-trap.

So now I have a sink! Next project is our woodstove! I love our kero heater, but as we cannot leave it running all the time while we are at work (it would run out of kero before we got done and home), well ... it is getting a bit chilly at night now that it's late fall, and so the day this post goes up, he went shopping and brought home the stove board for the woodstove to sit on when we get it. It looks like gray flagstones, and is pretty.

For me, it's now off to work on the shop some more. I have a need to get a LOT of Christmas stuff in the shop in the next month and sell as much as I can. Too many bills still to get caught up from the debacle of the last year!

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