During that fruit fly infestation a bit ago I found that one of the lairs they were hiding in was my bathroom sink.  Specifically, they seemed to have set up camp in the space where the overflow hole drains to the pipes.

The sink had a crack in the same spot when I first bought the place (AGES ago!) and has been gradually rusting ever since.  So I decided it was time for a brand new sink; and after a bit of pricing plumbers, I also decided that I was going to do it myself.

New sink:

I shut off the water, cleared out the cabinet underneath, unhooked the pipes, and took a putty knife to the old one.

I then assembled the faucet and drain stopped and mounted them all on my new sink.  Yes, my bed was my workstation.

It was when I went to get the water hoses from the old sink that I discovered that the faucet on it weird had the hoses built in.  Alas!

However, my guest bathroom had an old, ugly, and slightly broken faucet.

To prevent a second trip to the hardware store, I decided to mount the one that used to me in my bathroom there and use the hoses from that hookup on the new sink.  And so I cleaned out another cabinet and squished myself under another sink to make more connections.

I got the faucet installed…

But in the process the water knob underneath snapped off in my hand:

I could still turn the broken fragment, so I thought about just leaving i; but when I also discovered that the hoses from that sink were stiff metal and definitely were not going fit happily under my sink, I threw in the towel (literally) and made another trip to the store.

And then a third trip when the pipes I got for the new sink just barely didn’t line up with the old connections.

But then…

New handle installed!

New sink and new faucet installed!

Old sink disposed of!

New sink even runs water!

Huzzah!

Except the caulk wasn’t drying.  I did some Googling and found that caulk dries best in hot, humid weather.

Given that it was 20 degrees outside and, like, 5% humidity (just how I like it!), I moved my space heater and humidifier next to the sink and let them do their thing.

For two days.

At which point, when it still wasn’t dry, I checked the caulk I was using.

Turns out it expired seven years ago.  Did you know caulk expires?  You do now!

I refused to make a fourth trip to the hardware store for this project.  Amazon Prime One Day Shipping to the rescue!

I scraped off the wet caulk, wiped everything down again, and reinstalled it all with the brand-new caulk the next day.

Huzzah!  It actually cured!

This also means that I have personally replaced every faucet in my house as well as 1 toilet and 1 sink.  I started to think about how great I am at these things and how I could make a lot more money doing these things without having to tell the pipes to stop poking their neighbors or explain to the pipes’ parents that their pipes did not, in fact, turn in the assignment the pipes swear they did (because pipes lie.  Did you know that?  A surprising number of parents don’t).

But whenever I started pondering a career change during this project, it only took me crawling into the cabinet and having to mash and maul my own boobs to get them to fit through the opening to convince me that this was not a viable alternative.

I did have two excellent assistants though.  They could get into the cabinets no problem.