Amateur Megalomania

UPDATE – That little leak I mentioned at the end of this post?  Well, I worked on it tonight and managed to split the copper pipe right open.  Looks like this saga will continue…

Original post follows:

My last entry on home improvement left off with the kitchen sink project.

Time to finish this sorry tale.

A few months back, my wife bought a kitchen sink and a new faucet to replace the battered, ugly sink that came with our house. Knowing my limitations, I asked my dad for help on it and let the sink sit, unopened, in the garage until he had time to come up and instruct me on the dark arts of plumbing. He’s been busy, so when I finished my manly hose reel project, I decided I probably could handle this one on my own as well.

Pride goeth, and all of that….

Saturday night, I opened the box and examined the instructions for both the sink and faucet, while taking inventory of what I might need. A quick run to Home Depot supplied plumber’s putty, Teflon tape, and a new gasket for the garbage disposal. My wife picked these up. After all, the hardware guys kind if expect a woman to look a little lost (all hate mail can be sent to the address in the upper right…I’m not endorsing it, just observing the glass ceiling of the hardware world).

Later Saturday night, after wargaming the operation, I realized the flexible water hoses weren’t long enough to span the distance from the copper pipe to the new faucet connectors. I would have to replace the compression fittings. I knew about compression fittings because my dad mentioned them once, when I was still living at home fifteen years ago. I knew they had something to do with water…

I ran to Home Depot at 9:40 PM, twenty minutes before close. The first interaction should have been a sign as to how things were going to go with this project.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for plumbing.”

“Aisle 11.”

I look up to see I am standing in front of Aisle 11, under a sign that read PLUMBING. The employee glanced at my hands but I ignored him.

I scanned that aisle and found the compression fittings, confirming my idea that these are important to plumbers. The Depot has a nice layout, with an example of each of a gahzillion different fittings mounted to a board, behind which hangs bagged, saleable product. I had the forethought to bring along the connecting nut to the faucet, so I started scanning the area.

“May I help you?”

“Yeah, I’m installing a sink and I need a compression fitting.” I had just exhausted my knowledge base with that statement.

“What size?”

“Uh.” Then I remembered the nut and held it out.

“Half inch. What about the other end?”

I froze. He glanced at my hands (stop that!). I think he took pity on me right then. “Usually they run to a three eighths hose. “ He yanked one from the massive grid of product without looking. “Did it look like this?”

I examined the fitting. “I think it was smaller.”

“Smaller?? How old is the house?”

His question implied that a smaller hose was a possibility. I had already regretted speculating the hose was smaller, but I didn’t want to look like an even bigger fool. I was stuck with the small hose paradigm, and I’d go down in flames with it rather than backtrack.

I’ve always had a knack for sensing ‘outs’ when it comes to awkward moments. It isn’t a skill I’m proud of, since I think it has helped me more than once get a job I may not have been right for. It reminds me of some political skill that is less than honorable. But God help me, I used it here.

“It is a pretty old house (actually seven years). I expected three eighths too, so this surprised me. That’s why I’m here ten minutes before you closed. Who’d have guessed a quarter inch hose?”

I held my breath.

He stepped past me and pulled out a quarter inch compression fitting. “We don’t sell many of these.”

I accepted the fittings and shrugged. “It’ll work. Thanks.” I turned away to examine the PVC piping (premonition of my future) until he wandered off. I grabbed the three eighths fixtures and took off for the register.

No, I’m not proud.

Sunday morning dawned with the task ahead of me. I had a sense of what I had to do, and it seemed doable.

It didn’t take long to unhook the water hoses (three eighths…), unscrew the PVC fittings, unplug and unhook the garbage disposal, and figure out the sink was secured to the counter by clamps that needed unscrewing. Within twenty minutes of starting, I had a big hole in the counter where the sink used to be.

Surely this was a sign that this task was within my competency.

I brought up the new sink and demonstrated my smarts (S-M-R-T! I am so smart!). Installing the faucet BEFORE placing the sink in the counter was the obvious way to go. After all, who wants to crawl under the counter and wrestle with all of these bolts later? The faucet went on easily, and forty minutes after starting the project, I was ready to drop the new sink into place.

The old sink had clips. This sink didn’t. That didn’t seem right to me, but repeated readings of the instructions assured me to apply the provided silicone to the sink and drop it in place. That is, after cutting the hole in the counter to precisely fit the sink profile.

No mention about what to do if you already have a hole in place. I recall from physics class that holes generally aren’t movable, nor do they change shape easily unless one wants it to be larger.

I slid the sink in dry, as a test. It wasn’t a snug fit. As a matter of fact, the hole was almost too large. With some careful positioning, the sink would cover the cut, leaving me with a properly appearing sink/counter interface.

But I worried about the lack of lateral stability. Would the sink slide around even with the silicone in place?

I didn’t have much of a choice (see hole physics above). Diane slathered on the silicone (to the sink) while I held it in the proper orientation by the drain holes. A few minutes later, we had the sink on the counter, positioned, and were witnessing the proper level of silicone ooze. Things seemed to be going along ok.

After giving it some time to cure, I started in with the compression fittings on the new hose. The thing about compression fittings is the irreversibility. Once it is in place, the ability to remove it sort of defeats the purpose. I installed one end, eyeballed the needed length to span the distance between pipe and faucet, and cut the hose.

Too short.

It was an inch too short. Hoses are the inverse of holes when it comes to modification. You can’t make them longer.

And, of course, I only purchased enough compression fittings to accomplish the task without error.

This is where the Hardware Store Law of Increasing Returns comes into play. It states, to be concise, that one must run to the hardware store one time for every two hours a task takes to complete.

I knew exactly where the fittings were in Home Depot. It is closer to my home than Lowes. I would simply have to risk being seen by yesterday’s employee.

I went to Lowes instead.

Yeah, yeah. I know. But that extra thirty minutes was worth the potential embarrassment. If you are a man, you understand.

Back home with the proper fittings, I took care to actually measure the distance and add a couple of inches. I attached both lines to the copper pipe and then confronted another learning opportunity (or as I prefer to think of it “my idiocy”). Sure, I attached the faucet ahead of time. It might have been even better if I had attached the water lines and let them dangle down to the copper pipe. But no, gravity never occurred to me.

So there I was, laying on my back, inside the cabinet, reaching up into a very cramped area with two large wrenches, trying to apply Teflon tape with one hand. An hour of this reminded me of some particularly demented form of Yoga (I call this pose ‘the stupid plumber’).

The wrenches were particularly exquisite in how they mocked me. I would engage the nut that needed tightening, turn it about six degrees, encounter the sink body limiting my motion, and then have to remove and re-engage the wrench for another six degree turn. I wasn’t even turning the nut enough for the wrench to latch on to the next nut face. I ended up with some odd variation of turn, release, engage in the vertical plane, turn it like a doorknob, release, engage properly, turn, repeat.

For about a week. Or until my arms grew so weak, I risked clubbing myself in the head with these ill-suited tools.

Then there was the marvelous game of ‘turn the water on, watch it drip, turn the water off, and repeat tightening action only this time on wet hardware’. I can’t imagine a better Sunday.

Later, I learned that sinks do not have standard drain hole positions. The immutability of hole position came into play again when none of the existing PVC drain pipes were where they needed to be. Fortunately, they were assembled with this nice screw fittings, and come apart in a matter of seconds. Using the existing pipe sections, I managed to construct a means to mate the non-disposal drain with the terminal drain running to wherever dishwater ends up. Fortunately, PVC pipe can be made to bend slightly with enough determination. Stay tuned to see if there are any long term issues with that.

The disposal side was another ‘opportunity’. The new gasket was too thick to seat properly in the mount. It was the right size, but years of compression had made the old gasket a breeze to mount when I tested the disposal attachment mechanism. I really thought, in the planning phase, that this would be a snap.

If you’ve never tried this, it can be deceptive. You must press the disposal unit up into the mount, compressing the gasket to get a good seal, while then engaging three tabs on a circular collar, rotating it in a threaded fitting until it seats. Let’s do a quick count –

Hold disposal – Two hands

Line up three tabs at once – three hands.

I’ll leave it to you as an exercise to imagine how long this took me to accomplish.

Later, the disposal was in place and I was ready to make the final connection into the ‘T’ junction from the disposal to the terminal drain.

It wasn’t even close. Remember what I said about PVC pipe being able to bend a little bit? We were well beyond that option.

So, back to the hardware store. This time I went to Menards. Hopefully these hardware guys don’t talk to one another. In two days, I visited five stores.

It seems that my problem was a common one. They sold a flexible pipe for disposal attachment. Provided I ran it downhill (and I was) it would work fine. I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The flex pipe did not mount properly into the disposal. Nor did it mate with the PVC pipe already in place. And by the time I noted this, the stores were closed for Sunday.

Sitting at my desk on Monday, I figure out a new solution. The drain came with a five inch metal pipe that mated with the PVC ‘T’. My problem was that the ‘T’ was not high enough to mate with the disposal. So, why can’t I cut the metal pipe, move the ‘T’ up, and make the connection?

But I didn’t have a saw. Nor do I have a pipe cutter.

Back to the hardware store after work. The pipe cutter was about $40, while a small hacksaw hanging on the next peg was $7. Easy choice.

Until I started sawing. Fifteen minutes later, I have made a fine notch on the pipe…I think. If I run my finger over it, I can feel a little dent. At this rate….

I go back to the flex pipe idea and take a closer look at the mounting system. The pipe came with this huge gasket. I rejected it initially because there was no way it would replace the old gasket and still let me hook up the mounting bracket. Why would they provide such an obviously oversized gasket?

Then I noticed the groove cut inside. The gasket slipped on the pipe and sealed, providing enough of a flange to mount properly. Instead of re-using the old gasket (which is what I did), this new gasket both sealed the connection and gave extra material to connect to the bracket. In my defense, this kit did not come with directions. I guess they figured they didn’t need to explain how to mount a single pipe…go figure.

By late Monday evening, we turned on the water and watched it leak from the disposal. My five handed solution did not adequately seal the gasket, so I had to remove the whole thing and start over.

I learned that raw, blazing frustration CAN solve problems. I still can’t explain how it happened, but sometime during a blinding haze of rage, the disposal mounted itself properly.

The job was completed. The sink was in place. It works. (Never mind that little leak my wife discovered this morning…)

That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Filed under: Home Improvement