Kitchen War... Drips / Getting laid

Drips

I absolutely hate hooking up sink drains.  I have yet to ever do one which doesn't leak on the first attempt.  This kitchen sink was no different.



But before I started on the drain, I wanted to make sure that the water lines had full flow.  The cold water line has a stretch of galvanized pipe connected to copper in the basement and we had a problem with full flow in the old faucet.



I ran a full five gallons of water from both the hot and cold water without a problem.

As for the drain itself, I figured I'd do this one correctly and not cobble together a drain.  I started off with a center drain kit from Home Depot.

But first I had to install the strainer basket in the tub on the left side of the sink...

The plumbers' putty went down around the drain hole...

I tightened up the strainer basker under the sink and got a good "ooze" of putty all the way around the strainer basket.  A quick wipe with my index finger around the basket and...

Voila!  Strainer basket installed. 

Now under the sink to connect the water lines.  This faucet was interesting in that the water lines in the faucet were woven stainless steel.  However, neither the cold nor hot lines were marked.  I figured I had a 50/50 shot at getting the lines hooked up right the first time.  I started with the hot water source first.

I was cooking with gas.  Got it right on the first attempt.  After the water lines were hooked up, I started on the drain lines.

... and my luck started to turn.

First, the elbow part of the drain line was about 2 1/2 inches short.  No biggie, I had bought a 6 inch extension just for this type of circumstance.  I cut it to the correct length.

And the sink drains were connected.  I used the old P-trap with the accordian section and elbow to connect to the drain coming out of the wall.  It looked a little rough but I was ready to test...

Aaarrggghh!!!  Water was coming out of 4 of the 8 new connections plus the old strainer basket which had come with the sink.

I took off the old basket and discover the putty had deteriorated; it had probably gotten bumped and turned when it was removed from the prior installation.



I cleaned it up, put new putty in...

I reconnected the drain and left the bucket and bowl under the sink until the next evening when I could get to Home Depot to get a longer elbow so I could simplify the drain connections.

Frustration... I still had one leak.  I took the drain apart and trimmed 1/4 inch off each elbow so I could get the connection to the sink bowls perfectly straight.

Aaarrrgghhh!!!  But that didn't work.  I'd get one drain to stop leaking and then the other would start.  I tightened.  Undid.  Redid.  Nothing worked.

...until in desperation, I filled the connection with plumbers' putty.  Three of the four joints went right together.  But the 4th one... Let's just say I gave it a good talking to before it decided to cooperate. 

90 minutes after I started, I finally had a kitchen sink that didn't leak.

Getting Laid

In addition to installing the sink, for the last two weeks, we've been working on getting the tile installed on the counters on the west side of the kitchen.  Inspired by George Iverson's comment that the cabinets used to be covered by small tiles, we choose tile with a white victorian octagon with black square dots pattern along with a white sink rail.

Most of the time was spent fitting and cutting the tile.  The sink rails required some complicated cuts (at least for me they were complicated.)  Here's the one for the 90 degree corner.

...and for the 45 degree corner in the seating area.



The tile was installed over two weekends.  Weekend one we worked on the side with the countertop extension and diswasher.  After the sink rail was installed.

We used spacers to keep the tile the correct distance apart.

Once the tile for this side of the cabinet had been all cut, we started installing the tile using a product call Bondera TileMatSet.  Bondera comes in two basic types.  20 mil for horizon applications like below and 40 mile for vertical application.

Bondera is a double-sided adhesive which can be used on level surfaces in place of backer board and thinset.

You can do a slide the tile a small amount and once you have it in the proper location, you either press it down for 5 seconds or roll with a rolling pin.  I pressed down.

One of the advantages of Bondera is you can immediately grout once the tile is down rather than having to wait 24 to 48 hours for the thinset to dry.  You do have to grout within 8 hours of installing the tile.

... but before I did that, I had a bite of lunch on the new countertop.

...and then it was outside to mix the grout.

With black, it's not to hard to tell where you've grouted and where you haven't.

...and it gets everywhere.  Here's I am before it got really messy.

Once the grout was in, we cleaned it up with sponges.  We went through several five gallon buckets of water.

After the grout completely dried, we cleaned up the remaining haze with an acid cleaner (for which I worn rubber gloves.)

Weekend two, we spent focused on finishing the remaining 10 square feet or so on the other end of the existing counters.  (Next weekend, I plan on doing the small 12 inch wide cabinet between the refrigerator and stove.)

First down, the sink rail.

I changed up the process a bit this time and put the Bondera TileMatSet down first before I cut the tile.



This was a lesson learned from the previous weekend where I found it was difficult to remember which piece of tile went where when I picked it up to lay down the tilematset.

With only 10 square feet instead of 28 square feet like last weekend...

... the tile cutting went a lot faster, as did the grouting



But it was still just as messy and was a chore to clean up.

Sunday morning we were up bright and early to weed the garden.  My corn and beans didn't do very well; but the rest of the garden looks pretty good.

Two hours of hoeing and Robyn and I were done.

Now for the sink front.

We had looked at country sinks, also known as apron front sinks, for the kitchen.  We really liked the look.  However, because the counters were not standard and as folks in Minnesota say, they were a "bit spendy," we chose to go with a traditional sink.  As shown in my previous blog, I had to build a new cabinet extension to accomodate the larger bowls of the sink.

As opposed to the painted exterior plyboard which had been there, we chose to tile the extension creating a faux apron for the sink.

For this tile application, I used the 4 inch wide Bondera TileMatSet for vertical installations.

I couldn't find bull-nosed 3" x 6" inch white tile so I used 4 1/2" square bull-nosed tile and cut it down to the 3" width with the full lenght on the first row and 1/2 length on the second row.  This enabled the pieces of tile which I needed to cut to complete the row to be centered with the cut center piece of sink rail.



For the faux apron front, we used white grout rather than black.

Since it was such a small area, I used a pre-mixed grout.  30 minutes later, it was wiped down and the countertops were finished on this side of the kitchen with just the backsplash remaining to do.