Scattered Thoughts . . .

T he remainder of the plumbing parts I had ordered for our new kitchen sink installation project arrived last night.  This was good news because they weren't projected to arrive until early next week.  I successfully jumped on what little still needed to be done first thing this morning.  Now the new sink is fully functional! I needed some additional plumbing parts to connect the drain of the smaller sink basin to our waste plumbing so that delayed me in finishing up this relatively easy project.   The drains of our new sink do not line up exactly the same as our old sink so that was the first difference I needed to resolve.  The other difference is that the basins of the new sink are two different depths while both basins of the old sink were at the same depth.  The large basin of our new sink is at nine inches deep while the smaller basin is only eight inches deep.  The different depths really screwed up connecting the new sink to the drain.  I thought this would be quite easy to

I replaced our broken quartz kitchen sink yesterday.  Once we removed the broken sink it was very easy to see how shattered it was when we viewed it from the outside of the larger basin.  What a waste of time and money that quartz sink was for us.   One would think that any kitchen sink would be more durable to dings and bumps.  Needless to say, I will never recommend a granite or quartz kitchen sink.  I'm not even sure about granite or quartz for a bathroom sink...  what if someone dropped something fairly solid and it hit the bathroom sink?  I don't think I would take the chance.  Just avoid granite and quartz sinks altogether...  same with ceramic/terracotta and glass.  Hmmm...  I'm just thinking...  we do have ceramic bathroom sinks now and we have yet to have a problem in there so perhaps granite and quartz would be fine for a bathroom sink.   To cover it again...  back a few months ago...  maybe a year or so ago...  a heavy cast iron Dutch oven was bumped into the si

B ack a little over four years ago, we installed a new quartz composite sink.  We really liked this sink because it was so large, very deep and we even liked the color.  Unfortunately and very obviously, it is not nearly as durable and heat resistant as claimed.   While I was prepping our Christmas dinner, the sink shattered while dumping the hot water from cooking the pasta.  It had chipped and cracked slightly about a year or so ago when Sheila dropped a big, heavy Dutch oven in it but it was not leaking nor was the chip noticeable.  The hot water from the other day, however, shattered it with a deafening pop.  This shattered crack is so pronounced that we can easily see light through the crack.  The sink was now leaking like a waterfall.  As a temporary solution, I used some duct tape to seal the sink as best as possible.  We now only use the smaller other sink basin for running water.  The duct tape should have no problems effectively draining splashes from the smaller basin on the

It hasn't been what I would call a "terrible" week but, what the heck? As you probably already have heard, we had planned some extensive home renovations for the end of summer and early autumn but Sheila developed cancer again so we put all the renovations on hold until sometime after Sheila's recovery. We're now stuck in a cluttered house full of building supplies.  Over the past week or two, Sheila and I have been discussing what to do with all this clutter. I quickly decided to start finding a long term temporary home for each of the building supplies taking up our living space.  The kitchen and living room renovation is the biggest part of this project which is now on indefinite hold. We have Birch flooring, a lot of lighting fixtures, electrical supplies, windows, a range hood, a new faucet, a new kitchen sink, lumber, etc, all cluttering our home.  Yesterday, I decided to just go ahead and complete a little project... install that new kitchen sink an