Thursday: sink

After the new water heater, our kitchen faucet, which was already on the fritz, really needed to be replaced.  It gave us water, but in a weird way.  The instahot had also died about a month ago, so I decided to try and replace both at once.

It was a day of ups and downs.  I got a lot of things unplugged, only to have a really hard time getting a water filter out.  Joshua and I picked up some strap wrenches after swimming lessons and were able to loosen it up.  Hooray!  Everything was out!  We had lunch and I took a nap.

Things were going well and I got to installing the instahot.  I ordered the exact same unit so it could just be switched out.  Of course, that didn't quite work.  The fittings looked different.  Turns out, I needed some compression fittings.  Ok.  Off to Lowes!  I found what I needed, with some help, but the 1/4 nut didn't seem like it was going to fit.  (I carried the old instahot all around Lowes like a baby.)  It was the best option, so I bought it anyway in case the new one was a little smaller.  It wasn't.  I was on my third call of the day to Dad while Joshua filed down the hole and ended up making it big enough.  Like I said, it should have fit it just didn't quite fit.  So I was able to tell Dad that I didn't need his help...this time.

After that, I was almost home free.  It took ten minutes to get one of the screws in the garbage disposal back in, but after messing with it the screw finally caught.  A few more steps and we were done!  No leaks!

Now, keeping it real, this project did take most of the day (with the exception of swimming lessons, nap time, dinner, and karate).  The rest of the kitchen looks like there was an explosion.  I'm not all that optimistic that it'll get all cleaned up tomorrow, but hopefully at least the floor.  Obviously, I didn't put anything away because I want to watch for leaks.  Yeah.  That's it.