The Fate of a Sink

I’m apparently really good at posting here about every six months, but aside from that, it’s just a spambot’s paradise. When I started getting significantly more [spam] comment alerts in my email, I realized it was probably time to write an update.

It doesn’t seem like much has happened around the house since the drainage system was installed in the basement in January, but at least the basement has remained bone dry! A welcome change from the uncertainty of whether or not we’d come home to a swimming pool.

The one negative result of the installation has to do with our access to the basement. Our tenant has direct basement access in his unit, but we have to go down a set of steep stairs behind a locked door in the backyard—or at least we used to go down a set of steep stairs… Because of the drainage system installation, the workers had to rip out the old set of stairs so we’ve since been climbing down an eight-foot ladder to get into the basement. The main reason we need to go down into the basement at this point is to do laundry, so yes, that means balancing full baskets of clothing in our arms as we scale up and down (although up is much less treacherous, in my opinion). When we tell people this, they inevitably suggest pulley systems (accompanied by waving, “pulley arms” to mimic their proposed setup), but the opening just isn’t large enough for Rube Goldberg technology.

Soon enough, however, we’ll start on some major renovations that will create dry interior basement access for both units! We’re quite excited, but I’ll save that for a future post (hopefully sooner than six months from now!).

The main reason I wanted to write up a post was to talk about our recent, albeit minimal, bathroom renovations! Now, our house is a 1910 beauty, but throughout the years she’s unfortunately been the brunt of chop shop-type activity—wonky wall additions, mismatched millwork, windows installed incorrectly, and basic plumbing not done to code. The more projects we start to tackle, the more we realize how poorly she’s been treated.

A lot of this funkiness I’ve learned to overlook, but one abomination I’ve had a really difficult time ignoring has been the vanity in our bathroom:

 

Yes, the linoleum is terrible, too, but for some reason I can look past it for the time being because, well, linoleum is linoleum and everyone knows we’ll get rid of it someday; but I think ignoring the vanity has been particularly difficult because whichever landlord installed it in the past (again, this is a duplex, but I think we’re the only landlords who have ever lived on the premises) clearly didn’t care at all about making it fit in with the character of the house—aside from physically making it fit in by cutting out a section of the wall and the original wood door trim (sob!). There was also water damage underneath, overzealous caulking everywhere, and nails sticking out of the front that would catch our pant legs (and occasionally our bare legs—ouch).

On Memorial Day, I woke up and I decided I’d officially had it. Sure, I probably should’ve had the urge to get rid of it a little earlier in the long weekend, but for some reason it didn’t strike me until Monday that it had. to. go.

Well, I guess it wasn’t a brand new feeling Monday morning. The two nights prior I had been scouring the inventory on the Second Use website—a really great salvage yard in SoDo—and found a sink I absolutely loved. It was actually quite similar to the one I grew up with that’s still in my dad’s house; rectangular with super subtle Art Deco details with beautiful chrome legs and built-in chrome towel bars on either side. I’d seen other similar ones on the site before, but figured we wouldn’t be redoing the bathroom anytime soon so I let them go.

But that morning, I knew things would be different by EOD. Of course Trevor was a little unsettled by the DESTROY ALL THE THINGS mentality that had crested my brain that morning, but being married to me he knew this was totally normal and that things would eventually subside. He just had to play along for awhile.

So we drove down to Second Use right after they opened and I made a beeline to the sink cemetery section. I located the one I’d found online, but figured I’d check out the rest of the selection first before hauling it out of the store. It’s a good thing because soon enough, I came across its replacement—a porcelain pedestal with a built-in soap dish and porcelain teardrop handles, a more historically-accurate fit for our house. It even had a white porcelain pull for the drain plug that still worked with the existing pop-up assembly (not that I knew what it was called at the time… ooh foreshadowing!).

We told them we’d take it (only $75!), and they hauled it out to our car. For those of you who follow me on Instagram, you’ll probably recognize most of the photos in this post, including this one, in which I’ve—yet again—convinced Trevor to somehow squeeze large home improvement objects into the back of his beloved car. He’s such a good sport:

We got it home and while Trevor ran some errands(?)—I don’t actually remember where he went; I was clearly too preoccupied with the sink—I started cleaning it up because it looked like this:

Yes, grimy. When Trevor returned, we started attacking the vanity, which ended up being more difficult to extract from the wall than we’d originally imagined. First, in order to remove the sink and counter, we had to turn off the water shut-off valves under the sink; however, we quickly realized they were this close to falling off and flooding our entire house, so we decided they would need replacing altogether. This is where living next door to a hardware store comes in really handy.

We’d never done plumbing work before, but it’s amazing what you can learn by watching enough YouTube videos. Suffice it to say, I’m pretty confident our repairs were significantly better than what was there before, and now we know how our sink plumbing works!

Next up: Removing the counter. Because the previous landlord had taken chunks out of both the wall and the original millwork (again, sob), it was really wedged in; so despite cutting all the way through the overzealous caulking around the border, it was still impossible to pull it out without shredding up more of the wall. As I like to say, it has to get worse before it gets better… Right?

 

Once the counter was out, it was relatively easy to remove the cobbled-together cabinet pieces, leaving us with this:

 

You’ll notice the lack of a P-trap in the photo above. This is because it had been somewhat crooked, but when Trevor went to straighten it, it broke off in his hands (WARNING: Really gross-looking pipe grime in the photo below):

We’re also now horrified that we’ve been drinking any of the water that travels through our pipes as the incoming water was just barely able to get through a rust-encrusted hole the circumference of a Pixy Stick.

Again, we ran next door to the hardware store and got a new P-trap system, but for some reason it didn’t fit. We took it back to the hardware store, along with the broken trap, and they told us our bathroom sink was apparently plumbed with a kitchen sink hookup in the wall (see what I mean by chop shop?). Luckily they had an adaptor so we didn’t have to tear the wall down.

Once we replaced all the plumbing, it was time to test out the new old sink. We hooked it up and, much to our dismay, discovered all of the gaskets were dried out or rotten, and water began to pour all over the floor (but hey, after the basement we’re flood pros, right?). We shut off the water again and dismantled the sink. It was obvious the gasket on the drain assembly had to be replaced, but after nearly 100 years of grime buildup, the parts were essentially cemented together. Try as we might, there was no way we’d be able to salvage the original flange.

So what did we do? We broke out the hacksaw and sawed through the ancient drain assembly. It felt so horrible completely ruining it, but there really was no way to save it (trust me—SO many unfruitful Google searches).

By this point, it was around 10:30pm and there was no way we’d be able to get a new assembly and hook it up by morning, so I admitted defeat for the day and we went to sleep. The next day I had to work at my client’s office, but Trevor picked me up a little early so we could head back down to Second Use to see if there were any assemblies we could scavenge. No such luck, so we were without a bathroom sink for yet another night.

[To skip a long and drawn out explanation of “The search for the missing drain assembly” and skip to the really good part of the store, scroll down to the *.]

The next day I spent a number of hours going to different places to see if I could come up with a solution. I first went to the default Home Depot where the guy I talked to had no idea what a pop-up assembly even was. I tried to explain to him that I wanted something to work with the existing pop-up handle (it was beautiful and porcelain and worked with the old system perfectly!), but he clearly didn’t know what I was trying to do. Another customer overheard our conversation, and while the employee’s back was turned, suggested I go to a different place that knew old plumbing and might be able to help me.

So I then headed up to Aurora Plumbing & Electric and, while very friendly, my sink was just too old, and they didn’t have anything that would work. They did, however, provide me with plumber’s putty and some gasket sheeting, which I needed to cut out a gasket shape for the faucet that hadn’t been made in at least 50 years (naturally). For the assembly, they suggested I go to The REStore (similar to Second Use), and I spent a good hour and a half digging through their old popup assemblies and parts and tried to cobble together a solution. I was this close to figuring it all out, but an instrumental piece just wouldn’t fit, and water would have gone everywhere.

I went home, feeling defeated yet again, and worried we’d have to give up on the sink. I really wanted it to work, but I just wasn’t sure how I could make it happen. As a last resort, I wandered back to our trusty hardware store next door to see if they had any information. One of the employees said they didn’t have any assemblies that would work, but to try Morgen’s (just north of The REStore where I’d already been that day). Reluctantly, I climbed back in the car and headed north again to Morgen’s. I explained to them my dilemma and my understanding that the pull handle would likely only be decorative and that we’d probably just have to use a rubber stopper. But luckily, I was wrong!

The helpful employee said there was such a thing now as a handle-less popup assembly, where you just push on the stopper to close it, and push on it again to release it. The handle would still only be decorate, but at least we’d have a pluggable sink sans rubber stopper. I thank him profusely and ran home to check it out.

Trevor wasn’t home (important for the brute strength needed to pick up the heavy sink and place it on the pedestal—I may be a feminist, but I know when I can’t lift something and will probably drop it on my foot and bust a hole in the floor) so I’d have to be patient; but for the time being I cut out the wonky gasket from the sheeting and hooked it up to the faucet.

When Trevor got home, we tried to make it work, but the gasket on the new assembly just wasn’t fitting correctly, and water was still leaking everywhere. It was getting late, so we called it quits for the night and figured we’d handle it in the coming days. We were having people over the next evening, so I just had to make happy signs like, “Please excuse our mess!” covering the massive hole in the wall and, “Please use kitchen sink!” and taped it to the faucet.

On Saturday, I was gone for most of the day at a hand-lettering workshop with Molly Jacques (so great!) hosted by Jackson Fish Market where I contracted last year; but when I got home, Trevor surprised me with having sourced out the final gasket and hooking everything up! I was ridiculously impressed, especially considering how our not-so-far-from-the-truth joke about how I’m the handy one.

So Trevor and I were both so happy and impressed by his handy work and the sink saga was over!

Wait, not quite… It gets better.

* Bernard (remember Bernard?), my best friend Celeste’s father, is an architect and has been instrumental in helping us with our duplex and introducing us to all the right people to help execute our impending renovations. He and our contractor were both over the other day, and Bernard asked if he could use our restroom. Perfect! we thought, He’ll be so impressed by our sink!

He came back down to the front yard where the rest of us were standing and said, “Great job guys! Did you get that sink at a salvage yard…?” Trevor and I both nodded yes, and Bernard replied, “…because that’s the old sink from our house!”

“Are you sure?” Trevor and I asked.

“Yep.”

“It even has the same chip in the soap dish?”

“Same chip in the soap dish.”

We were all in shock. Bernard and his wife, Carole, had remodeled their bathroom years ago, but Bernard had hung onto the sink until a few months ago when he took it to Second Use. It then sat there until we found it amongst dozens of other sinks after first intending to buy an entirely different sink. Trevor and I always joke (okay, half-joke) about how we want to be Carole and Bernard… but maybe it’s really happening?

Celeste was shocked when I told her, too. Maybe I had unknowingly recognized it as being in their bathroom years and years ago, who knows; but I love the fact that we now have their sink. It’s come full circle. And despite the fact that our bathroom is now probably uglier to most than it was before—now there are two types of hideous linoleum on the floor!—it’s so much better in my opinion. The bathroom feels more spacious, and the sink and claw foot tub now actually match somewhat! Real floor tiles and wainscoting will happen someday, but for the time being, I’m just happy the counter is gone and a beautiful sink—Carole and Bernard’s sink!—is in its place.