2/29/2024

***Post orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed March 2014. Copied to this blog 1 decade lat­er***

**N.B. I am nei­ther a plumber nor do I claim that any of this is the cor­rect way to do this or up to code. With that said, I had 2 plumbers come through to change the dis­pos­al sev­er­al years lat­er and nei­ther of them men­tioned any­thing about the work**

Remem­ber yes­ter­day’s post about arm can­non work? Well I was mulling about some stuff that needs to be done around the house and remem­ber the kitchen sink that I swore I did­n’t want to touch? Think­ing about our finances as a fam­i­ly I decid­ed that hir­ing a plumber would be just too much for us to man­age, espe­cial­ly when this is poten­tial­ly some­thing I could do myself…just the cost of the sup­plies of course. Health is anoth­er con­cern for leav­ing it the way it is any longer: any­time we get near the sink I start sneez­ing. Any plants in and around the vicin­i­ty dies inevitably. I can’t imag­ine leav­ing my dogs at home with their sen­si­tive noses all day, know­ing that they could be breath­ing in mold, fumes or oth­er germs. And on top of every­thing, my thirst for learn­ing new things, how things work and all things handy­man requires atten­tion!

Deci­sion made, I took a bunch of pic­tures and high­tailed it to a home improve­ment store. I per­son­al­ly favor Lowe’s even though it’s fur­ther out, and I’m glad I made the trek because I start look­ing at pipes and am com­plete­ly over­whelmed. I hit up a store clerk and he was AMAZING. He looked at my pic­tures and start­ed pulling things out and explain­ing how to do it. I left stoked and set to it right away.

2.5 hours lat­er I hit a minor snag, and I head back to find him and the part I’m miss­ing. At this point I was very eager to show him what I was able to accom­plish. After some milling around I find him. He looked at my pic­tures and was just delight­ed. Beyond delight­ed! He went on and on about he got chills just see­ing what I was able to accom­plish because he tells peo­ple how to do things all day and many peo­ple just don’t lis­ten. I think I made his day, but he made my day even more. I gave him a big hug and came home to fin­ish the job. I’m not gonna lie: I was very ner­vous putting on the primer and cement because of the final­i­ty of every­thing, but I was care­ful to make sure every­thing lined up prop­er­ly. PROJECT COMPLETE. For now at least…Now it’s a wait­ing game to make sure that my work will hold. So far so good. I’ve dumped water all over the place and nary a drip. Yet. If it was­n’t for Bill C. at Lowe’s I would nev­er have made it that far. I am eter­nal­ly grate­ful for the con­fi­dence he inspired in me and the learn­ing expe­ri­ence.

The mate­ri­als I start­ed off with. Lat­er I found that need­ed many more tools such as my rotary tool, a full sized hack­saw, util­i­ty knife, plumber’s put­ty, Sharpie, drain bas­ket tool, a vac­u­um, among oth­ers. The most impor­tant pieces of equip­ment, how­ev­er, were safe­ty glass­es and a face mask.

Before pic. The prob­lems were leak­ing on both sides. The left, as you can see, places the lock nut to the sink basin com­plete­ly warped which was the main prob­lem. The pre­vi­ous home own­er used elec­tri­cal tape to hold the pipe in place instead of the slip nut. On the right side, the P‑trap had a nice hole in it where things would leak and you can see the gunk com­ing from the nut. The dish­wash­er drain hose could use some help too, but that’s for anoth­er day.

You see how the left sink drain bas­ket was com­plete­ly dis­con­nect­ed and mobile, hence the leak­ing.

After dis­man­tling, you can see that the real prob­lem and the source of the entire issue was that they did­n’t know what they were doing and placed the gas­ket on top of the sink where the flange is sup­posed to meet the sink with only plumber’s put­ty between them. This caused a leak that would in turn allow every­thing to dete­ri­o­rate. That’s prob­a­bly about the time the elec­tri­cal tape came into play.

Drain bas­ket gone.

Sawed off the pipe per Mr. Bil­l’s advice. In ret­ro­spect, I prob­a­bly did­n’t need to replace the pipes on the left side since the prob­lem was pure­ly the drain bas­ket, but.…

…I would nev­er have seen this. Who knows how long this gunk had been build­ing up. The source of the stench around the sink, I’d wager. It was RIPE let me tell you. This is why the res­pi­ra­tor mask and glass­es were so impor­tant.

Both sides sawed off and paper tow­el stuffed in the holes to help pre­vent sewage gas leak­age.

Sink tailpipe. I end­ed up not need­ing the red gas­ket because it did­n’t allow con­tact with the pipe.

Dry fit­ting the pipes. Hack­saw­ing is hard work, for seri­ous. Only miss­ing one item, the dis­pos­al tailpipe before being able to final­ize every­thing. This is when I left to find Mr. Bill again.

Primed and cement­ed!!! I sore­ly hope I did that cor­rect­ly. Time was of essence, so it was do or die. I made such a mess with the primer.

A heck of a lot bet­ter-look­ing than before, don­cha think? All the nuts where they’re sup­posed to be. 🙂

Water test. So far so good.

AAAAAND there you have it! A plumb­ing n00b like myself (I guess I tech­ni­cal­ly know a lit­tle more than your aver­age Joe mere­ly from my bath­tub fias­co) can replace sink pipes!! Still not 100% guar­an­tee as time will tell, but I am DARN TOOTIN’ proud of myself. I think my mom will appre­ci­ate this when she comes back. She was con­cerned about hav­ing to call a plumber and spend mon­ey on that.

Next project would be to replace the water dam­aged cab­i­net floor and try and change out the dish­wash­er drain hose.

…I hope noth­ing explodes overnight…