In our house things tend to take a while to get fixed. No one here is exactly the fixer-upper type, and generally we are more concerned about the color of our nails then the dirt under them.
Unfortunately our Kitchen sink didn't seem to understand this philosophy, and demanded some attention after springing yet another leak. The first one occurred about 2 years ago, and rather than call a plumber, we placed a bucket under it, and dumped it occasionally. No big deal right? Well suddenly a new leak occurred and we couldn't figure out where it was coming. It was time to take action.
So-o... Lowe's card in hand I entered the enchanted world where only men go. A place of power tools and gas grills, I felt like George W. Bush in a gay bar. Some where between the point the sink began to leak and my coming to Lowe's to fix it, I had the unusual idea of retrofitting our sink for a garbage disposal, since it didn't already have one. I mean how hard could it be?
So I grab the cheapest disposal, run over to the electrical section and buy 12 feet of 12 gauge indoor electrical cable, a few accessories, and I'm on my way.
The first obstacle was the electrical since, there wasn't an electrical outlet nor switch for a disposal already. Oddly enough, there was a switch for the Dish washer? Why? I have no idea, and we had never used it. So a little bit of re-wiring and I ran direct power to the dishwasher, and used the switch and the new cable to go to the disposal. I fed it through the wall and into the cupboard under the sink.
This is when I began to regret my ingenious idea. You know that little doohickey drain in the bottom of the sink? There's supposed to be a nut around it that with a few taps of a hammer should loosen right? Well it took me and Shannon nearly 3 hours of beating, heating, cussing, prying, crying, & screaming to get it out. Some genius when they installed the sink stripped the treads and then with the overuse of plumbers putty attempted to attach the drain. Needless to say girl power eventually won out, and we got it out without damaging the sink.
After that it was just a couple bolts and screws, and adjusting the output drain to connect into the existing plumbing and voila, leak fixed and the sink had been upgraded with a new garbage disposal. Total cost, only about 75.00, and in my opinion that's worth not having to scrape plates into the garbage anymore.
