We’ve done a few things to spruce our house up, and the most exciting so far has to be changing the evil tiny kitchen sink that the house came with. It was a round one, and so small it was hard to do dishes and and splashed water absolutely everywhere. Plus it had a matching round dish drainer which you couldn’t put many dishes in to dry. How hard can changing a sink be? We thought we’d give it a go ourselves! I’m here to tell you, that might not be a great idea.After this ordeal, I’ve gotta say I can understand why plumbers charge so much money. We thought plumbing our new sink in would be easy! Just buy the right pipe fittings, fix it to the old ones, and away we go. Wrong. The way they were for the old sink were basically opposite to this one, so the hole in the wall was in the wrong place.
Dammit.
This was after it took us around an hour to turn off the water mains, as it was rusted shut. That was fun. Wondering if every time I hammered, something would break off and water would shoot everywhere.
Dammit.
The easiest thing was cutting out the square the sink would fit into with the jigsaw, at least it would have been had we not started Monday night, I sawed two small portions and the blade snapped.
Dammit.
So the project was stalled until the following morning when we could go buy more blades. We then returned to the mess that has become our kitchen, and I jigsawed (totally a word) a nice new rectangle. All was good except for the fact we had only cleared the top two shelves in the cupboards to save time, and left things on the bottom two. Sawdust is the glitter of the DIY world, and it got EVERYWHERE. So much for saving time.
Dammit.
Right, sawdust is vacuumed up, we can put the sink and taps in their holes! It’s impossible to get the old tap through the hole that it was stuck in from the countertop. It drips anyway, so we don’t want to spend too much time getting it out. So off to buy a new tap, which we didn’t think we’d have to do straight away.Dammit.
We’ve got a new tap! This means we can plumb it in and turn the water back on so we can shower. Small win. We decide to test the tap to see if it works. One of the fittings wasn’t tightened all the way, water everywhere in the cupboards.
Dammit.
We call for reinforcements and bring in Adam’s Dad. He’s done this sort of thing before and is vital to the operation.
Win.
We realise the main water pipe is leaking from somewhere. Water all over the floor and one more thing to fix, if we even can. Call a plumber to have on backup if things go horribly wrong.
Dammit.
A new hole is being drilled through the wall to be in the correct spot for the pipes. The leaking pipe seems to be ok, just a small screw to tighten, and things are on the up. Hopefully today it will all be sorted! Or I might cry. Luckily we have a huge sink in our upstairs bathroom so I could do dishes last night. We were completely out of silverware and plates. Note to self, buy more of each.
All in all, we haven’t had any major catastrophes, but oh man, more wins than dammits would have been nice. This is why I’m not showcasing any of our house projects on my blog, because it’s all trial and error on our part, so there’s no good procedures. If I’ve learned anything from this one though, it’s to measure things properly to make sure they will fit BEFORE you start, collect all the tools you need beforehand so you don’t have to run to your boyfriends sisters house for things needed throughout the project, tighten alllll the things, and keep all your spare parts in one spot so you don’t have to go digging under dirty cupboards when you lose a washer.
Have you ever started a project thinking that it would go really smoothly and it didn’t?
