DIY 2: Electric Boogaloo

Same room. New challenge.

For as long as I can remember, I've valued my independence. From growing up as a typical 1980's latchkey kid to living in a single dorm room my last two years of college to living on my own for about seven and a half years now, I've always managed to figure out how to do things on my own, from teaching myself how to cook the basics to rigging a TV stand to putting in an overhead desk light in a desk with no overhead holes. (Here's how I did that.) Truth be told, I'm probably not as improvisational and self-reliant as I like to think I am sometimes, but I've still figured out enough to get me this far.

But what possessed me to try to replace my own bathroom sink? I mean, it looks fine...


But upon closer inspection...


Oh. Yeah, that's kind of an important piece that's just sitting out on the surface of the sink like that instead of being down in the drain where, well, where it's supposed to be. I'm not exactly sure how this happened. But it caused a problem that needs to be solved.

There's not a lot of room to wriggle around in the cabinets underneath the sink, but I was able to squeeze my way in there and get the underneath bolt supports loose enough to disconnect the assembly from the water line. Which left me with this:


Notice that the faucet is still attached to the flex piping. Easy enough to remove, right? Not if your wrench isn't big enough. I was going to need reinforcements.

BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL!!!!

You could knock somebody out cold with that thing. Seriously.

So I put the BIG WRENCH to work and got the old faucet off the pipes, then switched it out for the new joint.

Some serious age down below

Now this was the hard part - installing the new plunger. First I had to remove a leaky section of pipe and get the old pop-up assembly out of its death grip to the underside of the sink. Then I had to put the new one in its own death grip (which is far more manageable) and figure out how to re-attach the pipe and test for the leak, then tape it up.

The new pop-up assembly. It's GREEN! The wooden bit on the left is the sliding drawer on the top level of the cabinet.

The last part was installing the actual plunger and connecting it to the assembly, which revealed the source of the problem that led to all of this in the first place: the previous plunger had somehow gotten stuck and broke off inside the drain, which not only caused the leak, but also caused the drain stopper to snap off. Who knows. But after several adjustments, I got the plunger to work to where it does what it's supposed to do... plunge.

See? That thing moves up and down now like it's supposed to.

SUCCESS! *flexes*

All told, the job took five to six hours, not including cleanup and disposal of water and undesirables:

The de-parted

The moral of the story is that the "easy installation" that was touted on the package is a half-truth at best.

The other moral of the story is that sometimes doing it yourself is worth the aggravation, even if it's not done perfectly, because you can go and adjust things later and actually know what you're trying to do (and saving at least $300 in the process).

Actually, the real moral of the story, when you take into account that I've replaced a toilet, a water heater, a refrigerator, and now the bathroom sink since I've been here is this:

The next place I live is going to be a lot newer.

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Listening to: Kanye West - Stronger
via FoxyTunes