Tag: Amateur

DIY: Kitchen sink plumbing

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.

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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.

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

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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.

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Drain bas­ket gone.

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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.…

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…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.

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

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

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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.

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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.

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

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Water test. So far so good.

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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…

Scallion Pancakes

Writ­ten: 05/21/2023

First time mak­ing Chi­nese scal­lion pan­cakes

What

Chi­nese scal­lion pan­cakes

Ingredients

All-pur­pose/bread flour (2 cups), very hot water (3/4 cups), salt, scal­lions (green onion), veg­etable oil, sesame oil, sesame seeds (opt), oth­er option­al spices to taste

Option­al dip­ping sauce: soy sauce, water, sug­ar, sesame seeds/oil, scal­lions, gar­lic, chili, coriander…really, to your taste based off the soy sauce and sesame

Time

10-minute prep + 2‑hour wait + 10-minute process + 5‑minute pan fry

~ 2 hour (wait), 25 min­utes (make) total

Steps

  • Mea­sure out flour into mix­ing bowl and cre­ate a well into which you pour the hot water
  • Add salt (and oth­er sea­son­ing if you want)
  • Mix until you get a rough ball of dough
  • Turn it onto a light­ly floured sur­face and knead until it form a sticky but smooth ball
  • Set aside to rest either wrapped in plas­tic or cov­ered in a damp tow­el
  • Let it alone 1–2 hours
  • Make the Oil Mix­ture here if you’re going to use it (make sure it gets to room tem­per­a­ture): veg­etable oil, sesame oil, and tea­spoon of flour. Bring to bub­ble and cook for 1 minute before let­ting it cool to room tem­per­a­ture. About 3 table­spoon veg­etable oil to 2 tea­spoon sesame oil.
  • Cut the dough in half mak­ing sure to recov­er the oth­er half so it does­n’t dry out (if you want small­er cakes, then do quar­ters or eighths)
  • Roll it into a cylin­der and then roll that thin and flat. You’re aim­ing for a rec­tan­gu­lar piece (mine did­n’t get very rec­tan­gu­lar, lol)
  • Brush on a lay­er of the oil mix­ture or just oil and sprin­kle the chopped scal­lions. Note: Here is where you can add the sesame seeds or what­ev­er oth­er spices or meats or what­ev­er you want
  • Now to make the lay­ers. The tra­di­tion­al way is to tight­ly roll up the flat­tened and scal­lioned dough into a thin cylin­der again, and then cre­ate a snail shell from that rolled up piece. You can also fold it on each oth­er to make the lay­ers. I just did the snail shell
  • Once it’s a snail shell, sprin­kle some flour on it, turn it, and flat­ten it with your hands a bit before using the rolling pin to squish out some bub­bles (it’s kin­da fun, like pop­ping bub­ble wrap). Note: Here, you can con­trol how much you’re squish­ing it…do you want it airi­er and more lay­ered by leav­ing the air pock­ets inside? Or do you want it super-duper flat like a crack­er?
  • Heat up some oil in a skil­let or pan. It’s fry time! Heat it up to your desire!

Done!

Pictures

Cylin­der
Roll it thin and flat. Thin­ner the bet­ter
Brush on oil or oil mix­ture
Sprin­kle scal­lions
Roll ‘er up
Try to make a nice, tight line
Snail shell it
Looks like a poop
Sprin­kle light­ly with flour
Hand squish
Roll it out to desired thick­ness
On the pan
Flipped
plat­ed
Crispy out­side, and chewy inside!!! YUM!! 🙂

Notes

  • North­ern pan­cakes are appar­ent­ly thick­er and use the oil, while the south­ern style pan­cakes are thin and use less oil
  • Thick or thin is up to you. If you like thick­er, be care­ful not to be too fussy with the rolling of the snail shell
  • The ones I made end­ed up being thick­er than I pre­fer, so I’d try to make any in the future much thin­ner
  • I’d also make future ones small­er
  • Maybe I’d like a mix of the north­ern and south­ern style pan­cakes
  • Plain old soy sauce was per­fect as a dip­ping sauce for me
  • Maybe some onion pow­der or maybe a pinch of cur­ry would be a good addition…I felt they were a bit bland, but then again, they’re made to be dipped and eat­en with oth­er dish­es like soups
  • I think I may have over-cooked the pan­cakes mak­ing them too crunchy (though I like that)
  • Per­haps adding some shred­ded meat inside would make it real­ly good
  • Over­all, it was fun and pret­ty easy to make
  • Oth­er recipes called for bread flour (high pro­tein con­tent), but I just used all-pur­pose flour (it’s a 1:1 sub­sti­tu­tion if inter­est­ed)