First project of the new year - the kitchen sink!

Our house boasts the original enameled cast-iron kitchen sink and bathtub.  While enamel is one of the most long-lived surfaces for such items, it does eventually get scratched and lose its polish. There are about a million Google search results for how to re-enamel an enamel tub (this involves using enamel paint over the existing finish), but unfortunately the previous owners of our house apparently didn't do their homework before slapping on a coat of (some sort of) paint over the sink and tub.

 

You can see the paint flaking off, and the original enamel finish underneath it.

 

In addition, years of being wet caused some of the grout on the edge of the sink to fail, loosening some of the tiles.

We started the project by removing as much old caulk and grout from around the edge of the sink. A utility knife and a window scraper (straight razor blade) worked well for this job.

 

Next, we pulled out the (old, disgusting, loose) faucet. We considered replacing it, but couldn't find any faucets that would look nice in a 50's farmhouse kitchen, AND didn't cost an arm and a leg, so we just cleaned this one and replaced it.

 

Next, we used Orange paint stripper to remove all the paint on the sink. You can see here how it made the paint loosen and bubble up.

We chose this stripper because it's fairly mild, and we didn't want to damage the underlying enamel any more than it had already been damaged. We tested a small section to be sure it wouldn't stain or damage the enamel first, and then went to town. (P.S. wear gloves when you use this stuff. It's not as toxic as some but it's not something you want to get on your skin.)

After scraping off all the paint and orange goo,we wiped everything down with odorless mineral spirits (again, wear gloves!) and began reassembling things.

 

We used an adhesive caulk to stick the tiles back in place.

We caulked the rest of the sink with a tub and tile caulk. Hubby applies the caulking; my job is to go behind with the "magic caulk finger" and make everything neat. I advise using gloves and lots of water and paper towels.

After the caulk had dried for about two hours, we reinstalled the faucet. Then we went over any grout lines on the tiles with a sanded caulk - it looks like grout but works like caulking. A lot of the grout really needs to be replaced entirely because it's gotten flaky and "rotten", but without scraping it all out (and risk damaging the tiles), using the sanded caulk was the best we could do.

Ta-dah! The "new" kitchen sink! I still need to clean the grout on the backsplash and scrub some stains on the old enamel, but it looks about a million times better!

We had originally planned to refinish the sink "properly" with enamel paint, but it seems that even the best paint jobs (done by pros, using spray enamel) only last 3-5 years. After stripping the paint off the sink, we decided that the original enamel really isn't that bad - sure, it doesn't have it's original shine, but it looks like what it is - and antique farmhouse sink. We're good with that. :)

Next up: the bathtub!!!

Dear Murphy, you are a mean-ass bastard and your "laws" suck

Long-time readers will know that when my husband leaves town, stuff breaks. Not minor stuff, like the TV (which we never use) stops working or something. No, I'm talking big, honkin' oh-fer-fffs-sakes problems. For example:

• The entire AC/HVAC unit died and had to be replaced
• Taran put a nail through the bottom of his foot and had to have surgery
• The shed roof fell down
• An extra pony showed up for breakfast (ok, that one was amusing, but STILL)

There's a laundry list of other items too, from long ago when we lived in our old house in Suburbia. The gas heat was cut off on the coldest night of the year, I ran over a stick with the car and it totally messed up the front steering... it would almost be amusing if it were happening to someone else. But somehow it's become Murphy's law that something huge breaks when the hubby leaves town, and usually the further away he goes, the bigger the problem.

I'm sure by now you're wondering what the heck has happened this time. As luck would have it, there's a massive water leak somewhere under the guest house.

 

Water is not supposed to be here.

 

Lake at the back east corner of the house. Awesome.

 

More water. I do NOT want to see my water bill this month!

 

This is where I was hoping the problem was - a coupling where the trench is in the first pic. After letting it dry out for a couple of days, I unburied the coupling and turned the water back on - that coupling was bone dry.

I looked around the house, hoping to find the leak in an accessible area. See, the pipe runs under the house for its entire length, then runs along the back wall to the kitchen and bath. The house is pier-and-beam, with less than one foot of clearance under it - which meant that if the leak was under the house, there would be no way to fix the pipe and we'd have to re-run the entire line.

 

 By some miracle I found a leak near the kitchen window. It was the hot water pipe, which I discovered when I put my hand in near-scalding water. I called the plumber out*, and he dug out the pipe, cut out the problem section, and applied the pressure coupling you see here.

We turned the water back on, and the pressure coupling appeared to hold. I left the water on overnight... only to come out to even MORE water the next morning. This time, the water was cold, and it was clearly not coming from the new coupling.

Long story short, we had the entire water line rerun. Everything is now tidy, dry, and functioning normally. For the next 50 years, I hope.

Hubby is never, ever allowed to go out of town again. Especially not to Patagonia, which is where he's going next week.

Anybody care to guess what's gonna break then? I'm taking bets...

* This makes it sound simple. I initially called THREE plumbers, none of whom called me back. Then I called my across-the-street neighbor for recommendations. I got the first plumber out, who told me he didn't dig. I paid him the fee for the service call, then *I* dug out the first coupling. When that was dry, I called my neighbor back to see if he had any other recommendations. We got a friend-of-a-friend plumber out, who replaced the hot water coupling at 6 p.m. on a weeknight. When that didn't solve the problem, I called him back out, and he re-ran the line over the weekend. There's something to be said for having neighbors who know people! I am quite indebted to them!



 

Fun (haha) with plumbing

Over the holidays, we were gone visiting family and had turned off the water to the house and drained the pipes. A big part of why we chose to turn the water off was because we weren't certain that we had done the plumbing for the bathroom fixtures correctly and didn't want them to leak while we were gone. We ended up leaving the water off until yesterday, which turned out to be a good thing because last week we had three days of weather where it didn't get above freezing. We had three friends with burst pipes, but both of our houses came through just fine.

Or so we thought. Today, we had turned on the water to mix mortar and whatnot, and things seemed fine. About 30 minutes later, the husband was showing his sister (who is in town visiting) and her SO around the property, and they happened to include a tour of the guest house... where he found water fountaining from under the kitchen sink. Awesome! Apparently, even though we had turned off the water to the house and drained the pipes there, we didn't drain the water in the pipes in the guest house. With the freezing temperatures, a pipe had burst somewhere in the wall behind the kitchen sink. We quickly turned off the water to the house again and decided to deal with the mess later. After all, we plan to gut the kitchen in the guest house sooner or later - with the termite damage in the walls and the floor with the impressive topography, we expect to have quite a lot of work to do there. I guess we'll be replacing the plumbing there too. Sigh. We also want to install a cutoff valve for the guest house water so that we can shut it off independently of the main house. Of course, first we have to FIND where the water comes into the guest house first...

Back at our current house, we had a rather nasty backup in the kitchen sink drain. After pulling out the p-trap and finding nothing, we got out the toilet plunger and went to town. One of the kiddos helped the hubby while he plunged.

One technique - using a toilet plunger to unclog your drain.

Although we eventually got the sink to drain, we discovered about 5 minutes later that it had backed up into the laundry area in the garage. We had nasty, disgusting gunk from the drain all down the wall where the laundry drain is and under the washing machine. The husband and I spent the next half-hour cleaning up the muck and hosing out the garage. Fortunately, the nastiness didn't spread too far in the garage, but it was still really gross. Unfortunately, our garage still stinks and so does our backyard where we hosed everything out. We've put out vinegar and sprinkled baking soda everywhere, so hopefully the stench will clear up soon.

I believe out next trip to Home Depot may include the purchase of a pipe snake so we can finish fixing the clog. The sink drains, but it's still not totally right. Oh well, I guess we'll add amateur plumbing to our list of talents!