YATTA!!!*

IT'S FINISHED!!!

All in all, this took: 

• 6 cut-off wheels on the Dremel (cutting the hole in the stainless steel sink for the filter tap. I kept breaking them)
• about $30 in parts, most of which were returned to the store once I realized I didn't need them (options!) - when it was all said and done it ended up costing me about $12 for all of this
• 4 trips to Home Depot (fail, fail, fail and fail), and
• 1 trip to Lowe's during which I received not one but TWO outstanding customer servicings, and which solved all of my problems because they actually have employees who know what they're doing and are willing to help.  SUCK IT HOME DEPOT. 
• 10 days, all told, from start to finish (time, money). 

Turns out, all the stuff the people at HD were telling me was basically bullshit.  Or rather, generalized "advice" based on (a) not understanding what the real problem was (not just based on my description, but a series of detailed photos I took of the plumbing), and (b) not actually giving a shit.  The guy I ran into at Lowe's (David) had been a plumber and a steel pipe-fitter all his life, and saw the problem in the photos right away: the people who built my house jimmied the plumbing together with cheats and hacks, just like they did every other thing in my house (budget house = everything's half-assed and incorrectly done).  I'M SO SURPRISED.   Not.  Anyhow, David assembled all the correct parts from the shelves, showed me how it was supposed to go together, and then showed me what the original installers had done that was wrong, how to get it all apart, and how to re-do it the correct way.

After a week and a half of futzing with patches and fixes, following David's advice I got the entire thing gutted and then re-plumbed in just two hours.  I put my tools away, I cleaned up the kitchen, ran all the dishes that have been building up since the 15th through the dishwasher (living single perk: it was only two loads), and SAT THE HELL DOWN.

Soooo shinyyyyy....  *_*

And holy cow, this thing is 11" deep.  My old fiberglass one was 9.5", and I thought it was too deep for comfort (it was, while I was doing 100% of my dishes by hand).  But the extra inch and a half means I can wash large pots and cutting boards that don't fit into the dishwasher without splashing water all over the kitchen.  Yay!

So, my BFF thinks I'm insane for doing all this myself, especially given the headache it's been.  But I haven't just replaced my sink:  I've learned how to replace a sink.  I've disassembled and reassembled everything under and on top of this sink twice each, including the disposal and water filtration system.  I learned new cutting techniques, new chemical processes, a new system of sizes and methods.  And best of all, now I know that if I ever need  to do this again, for myself or to help someone else, I CAN.  That alone is worth every frustrating moment.

~ fin ~

[This post brought to you by Aerosmith, and much dancing-around-the-kitchen.]



* Japanese for, essentially, "Hooray, I did it!"