Robyn fixes disassembles the kitchen sink

CHALLENGE: dripping kitchen sink
ROBYN'S SOLUTION: probably just a washer or something in the aerator part on the tip of the faucet. Easy!
HOME DEPOT GUY'S SOLUTION: No, if it's dripping, it's the cartridge. You need to take the cartridge out of the faucet and bring it in so we can find the right one.


Oh, dear. This is a bit more complicated than I thought, but I have the Internet, right? I research the job and find that it's very simple. I also come across a video on how to completely change the faucet. This will come into play later.

Step 1: Take a shower, do your hair and makeup, and put on good clothes and jewelry.

Step 2: Approach the sink and show no fear.



((sink's view -- I think it can smell the fear))



How the hell do you even start? I pry off this top thingy.



I quickly realize that every picture of this project will reveal shameful griminess.

Next: Get tool kit. My husband had a few screwdrivers and hammers lying around. Good thing my dad gave me this trusty tool kit some years ago. I love it and have always taken special care to return all tools to their proper places so they are always there when I need them.



Crap! Where are all the damn tools? I'm sure I can blame this on my husband, who is not organized like I am. Then again, I have never seen him use a tool.



I know I need an Allen wrench, or at least I think that's what these are called. Of course, the size I need is not on here. But I find I have little loose interchangeable parts, and one of them fits.



Next, I need a Philips screwdriver, but naturally, the faucet company would not want to use one that is of average size. Never fear, I have an interchangeable one that fits! Thanks, Dad!



From here, I decide to just keep taking pieces off until I see something that says "cartridge" to me.









At this point, nothing more will budge. I pull and pull and twist and turn. I shred the metal with pliers. I'm not sure what to do. I'm sort of amazed that I made such a mess just to fix a drip. I decide to go to Home Depot and look at cartridges, thinking maybe I can figure something out by seeing what they look like.

But first, I need a hamburger. I think I deserve one, and the Flying Star will do just nicely. I enjoy most of my burger, then get up to get a drink refill. By the time I return, my table has been cleared. They kindly replace my meal.

I go to Home Depot and realize that cartridges vary widely and this trip is of no help. Suddenly, replacing the entire faucet seems so much easier. I mean, ours is a decade old and very basic. Maybe it would spruce up our kitchen a bit. You know what else would spruce it up? A new $220 black sink. One thing at a time.

And, dang! Did you realize kitchen faucets are really expensive? The one I picked was $120, and that was on the cheap end.



Now, I've got to get involved with the area under the sink. I clear out all the stuff and am appalled by the filth. Why don't I ever think to clean under there? I guess because there are better things to do.



Spray-spray, wipe-wipe.

There! Good as new! This will come in handy later when we are trying to lie down in there. Or Mark did, anyway. The idea of rust chips falling in my eyes and mouth didn't appeal much to me.



So, I watch a video and figure out how to disconnect the water source and the hot/cold tubes. That's easy. But my sink is not like the ones in the pictures and videos online. It's held on not by two bolts to the sides of the pipes, but apparently by one bolt that connects the spray hose and is located within centimeters of the hot/cold pipes, which are not rubbery at this area, but copper and don't want to make way for the wrench. I did buy a basin wrench, which helped in the space. I get it where I want it, but I can't budge it. So I get my not-so-handy-but-stronger-than-me husband and show him what bolt I'm going for and he gets under there and tries with all his might. He yells like those big guys at the gym when they are putting all their might into something. Then he complains he hurt his voice. But it's rusty and will not budge.



By this point, I had already gotten off the metal plate of the faucet, but not the part underneath. I discovered this nasty mess, though I'm starting to believe it's plumber's putty and not that I'm a disgusting, filthy, non-cleaning pig. If there's one thing I do clean it's my kitchen.



So that's what I'm left with. A gross, disassembled kitchen sink. My husband has already gone running to Ronnie, the neighbor who is a plumber, but he wasn't home. I hope he can come and help us very soon.

Done!

Finally! After months of painting, our home is finished. First, the painter who flaked out repeatedly. Next, us doing it ourselves -- it was so much miserable work. And then this past three days a (dependable) painter came and finished the job in the high parts we couldn't reach. It looks wonderful, but no pictures till I get a chance to hang art and put everything back where it goes.

Look at my fancy new stuff

We got new bedroom furniture. We were replacing this old stuff that belonged to Mark's parents when they got married:




It now looks like this:



(I'm trying to figure out what to do about the ugly part showing through at the end of the bed.)

The disappointing part: This set includes the two largest nightstands ever created by mankind, and they do not fit in our room. They are really cool nightstands:

They feature a drawer with built in charger plugs for your phone and such:



They come with a bed tray that props up or lays flat, and folds and fits neatly in a drawer:



They have a pull out tray:



They have other drawers, too. And then they have these little brass decorations that when touched turn on a nightlight underneath the nightstand.



We had to use one nightstand as the TV stand, shown above. The other one has to find a home. As for what we use as nightstands, I'm trying to figure out something smaller, yet nice looking.

On to other things:

My "Tilted Duster" sweater is coming along, though it doesn't look like much right now:





And my October socks are moving a bit slowly, but I'm almost to the heels:



We've painted most of the kitchen. We have a couple of walls in the den to do, and then we will have to let a pro finish the rest of the house with the high ceilings. I can nearly see the end of the painting for me! I'll post kitchen pictures when it's complete.

Tomorrow, I am going to go see a Toby Keith concert. I know, COUNTRY. But Toby Keith is A-OK, in my book.

That's about it for me right now.

5 ... long ... days ... later

We finally finished painting the master bedroom and bathroom. It took five days, but I love how it came out. Reasons it sucked to paint this area of the house:
1. rounded corners, which makes changing colors hard because you have to create a clean line somehow.
2. lots of weird little walls and surfaces, requiring triple the detail work
3. one open space, so we used the same colors, but we needed both semigloss and eggshell versions, which meant we were working with lots and lots of buckets
4. Mark had never painted anything before in his life

The colors we used were by Behr, and they are "Firebrick" (rust), "Caramel sundae" (tan) and "Warm cocoon" (yellow/creamy color)

First, here is what I'm talking about with the bullnose corners. I wanted to change colors here, but there was no good stop point. What I did was tape a line and paint the first color. I tried to seal the tape as much as possible. I found that if you take a hard object like a flathead screwdriver and really run it over the edge of the tape, it helps get it in the nooks and crannies. Then I painted color No. 1. Later, after that dried, I taped over it and painted color No. 2. When the tape came off, it still bled, like this:



So I then took a brush and color No. 1 and very carefully and with a muy steady hand touched up my line. It came out surprisingly well:



If all else failed, I had planned to order this blending tool.

I also found this edger tool to be a lifesaver. It made great edges in a fraction of the time. It's good for the edge where the wall and the ceiling meet, but also for other places, like where a tan wall intercepts a rust wall. It worked well, but sometimes it messed up. Then I found this DELUXE version, with guides that pop away while you apply the paint and therefore avoided messes. It was flawless! They were very inexpensive, and you can buy refill brushes.

Here are pictures of the finished product. Our bedroom furniture is older than me, but we are about to order some new furniture, which will really make the room look great!

The Neverending Job -- kind of like "The Neverending Story," but without a cute luck dragon

I've been busy. Very busy. You see, we finally decided to have our house painted inside. We still had the original, boring, white paint. And plenty of scuffs to go with it.

We bought lots and lots of paint with a rebate special at Home Depot. Then we hired a guy named "Snake" to do the painting at a reasonable rate. You will probably not be surprised when I tell you that hiring a guy covered in tattoos and named Snake was not a good idea. He was, well, a laid-back kind of guy. As in, why show up for scheduled painting days or consultations? What's the big deal in having someone move all their furniture and everything and then not show up? Can't people just sleep in the hall until whenever you can show up?

Well, because our bedroom was an unusable disaster, I decided we'd paint it ourselves. And we've been doing so for days now. We just finished the bedroom and are moving on to the bathroom today. I've just been doing what I can before work every day. It's probably the hardest part of the house because our bedroom/master bath have a lot weird little angled walls -- basically, it's far from a nice square. So far, though, it's just such a great difference!

Photos to come ...

I'm a handyman lady

After painting the bedroom, I was pretty sure I would never paint anything again. It took three days. Then, about 24 hours later I decided to paint the bathroom. Who knows how the human brain works?
I painted it the same color as the bedroom, Fudge Bar by Behr. While I was thrilled by the new look of the bedroom, I was less thrilled with the bathroom. It's fine, but I'm just not overly excited by it. One thing that surprised me: I painted the whole bathroom in a matter of hours. I guess I'm becoming an expert.

Here is the bathroom before:



Here is the bathroom after. It's kind of like those people makeovers where you think how they cleaned them up all nice for the after picture, so it's hard to compare. The bathroom was really dirty before, but after I painted I cleaned it and put away the junk:



I have this sheer shower curtain, and I bought a brown liner to go under it. Then I came across these shower curtain hooks and that's what inspired a color scheme of chocolate/turquoise -- kind of desert-like. Only in the end, I had more of an aqua/greenish look to the accessories. This is partly because of the "artwork" on the walls that I already had and because I don't want to buy new towels.




I found these counter accessories for half price at Target. They have little cutouts in the ceramic, but it's hard to see here:



I also decided to replace the knobs on my spare bedroom furniture. I like the original wooden knobs, but after many moves, some of the knobs were stripped and wouldn't stay on, even with glue. The night stand is permanently missing 2 knobs and the dresser has one that's only setting there, but falls off if you touch it.



I switched to these metal knobs: