renovationism » laundry sink

finishing the laundry sink part 4 – the final chapter

Tim — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:12:13 +0000

The sink comes with a hole in the back right corner for the faucet, but the hole for a soap dispenser is optional, and must be punched out by the installer. That’s you. The sink cost a few hundred dollars, and now you have to smack it with a hammer. The underside is scored for the punch-out, and they’ve placed a nice little label on top to aim at. But, still. A few hundred dollars. It’s enough to make you think about just buying a little softsoap dispenser to keep on the counter top.

One.... two....

There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?

Whew

A little work with a file and the soap dispenser base goes right in.

Yeah, it was worth it

It’s much easier to install the faucet before setting the sink in place. The sink also comes with clips that are supposed to grip the underside of the counter top and hold it in place, but the plywood underlayment and backer board together were too thick for the clips. Also, the sink’s right side was so close to the edge of the counter top that there wasn’t room for the clips. Guess I should have read the sink’s installation guide in advance. So I skipped the clips, betting on the sink’s weight and a bead of caulk to hold it in place.

Caulk. Ugh. For some reason, I had a tube of pure silicone sealant laying around, so I ran a bead of it around the rim of the sink and set it in place. What a #*$&% mess. I had to pull the sink out and spend about 30 minutes with turpentine cleaning off the counter tiles and the underside of the sink. Then I got smart and found a tube of kitchen & bath adhesive caulk. It cleans up with soap and water.

After the sink was in place, I ran a thin bead of caulk where the sink met the counter top to seal it off.

Just Say No to silicone

The waste pipe in the wall was a little low, so I had to use an extension to get from the sink drain down to the j-trap. The hot and cold water supply pipes come attached to the faucet, so all I had to do was use a bit of Teflon tape and attach them to the supply valves.

The faucet has a pull-out wand, so there’s an extension hose that hangs down underneath with a doughnut-shaped weight on it to pull it back in when you return the want to the faucet base. One end of the hose connects to the wand, and the other connects to a water supply hose that extends down from the faucet. It’s a push-on connection, which seemed a little… weak to me.

Which, of course, it was. A few seconds after I turned on the water, the pressure blew the hoses apart, and I had a cabinet full of water. As I sopped up the mess, and seethed, I wondered how I was going to get this defective faucet out and return it. It’s almost impossible to access in the back corner of the cabinet. So, I pushed the connection together and turned on the water again. And guess what happened? It held!

A little water never hurt anything

Ok, now back to reality. Seriously, did you think it would hold? If so, your denial mechanism is stronger than mine, because, even as I turned on the water again, I knew it would blow.

This time, as I cleaned up the mess, I suppressed my anger and tried to think rationally. I had to have missed something. But, how could I figure it out? If only there were some sort of… document. Something that describes the pertinent details. I scoured the packaging materials and came across an obscure document called the Installation Guide. Hm. An interesting read. And, it included a reference to a little plastic clip that holds the tubes together. After rooting around through the box, I found that little piece of plastic I had dismissed earlier.

It's alive

The big picture

finishing the laundry sink – part 3; two steps forward, one step back

Tim — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:44:16 +0000

A notched trowel spreads the tile mastic. A bullet level and a 2-foot level help to make sure everything is… um… level.

Hm, this is easy. I should be done in no time.

I wanted tight grout joints. 1/16″ spacers do the job.

Hanging the edge tiles

I didn’t want to edge tiles pulling the top tiles out of whack, so I let the top tiles dry for a day before I hung the edges.

Dry time

Caulk is all you need to affix the backsplash to the wall.

A little dab'll do ya

Despite the best intentions of the level brothers, Bullet and TwoFoot, I somehow ended up with some uneven joints.

Damnit

So, I yanked out a few tiles, used a scraper to remove the dried mastic, and re-set them.

Why do anything just once?

Ah, grouting. What have we learned about grouting? That time of day is a factor to consider.

Don't grout angry. Don't grout angry.

11 reasons not to start grouting at 4:45 pm on a saturday in february

Tim — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 14:09:04 +0000

It’s only a few tiles on a small counter top. You’ll think it’ll be a quick job. You’ll be wrong.
You won’t get the hose ready for cleanup because it’s cold outside.
You’ll grab a way-too-small container in which to mix the grout. You’ll spill the dry grout everywhere. But, you’ll demonstrate some sense by putting your dust mask on before the powder starts flying.
You’ve mixed grout before, so you’ll wing it instead of measuring ingredients. You’ll put too much water in at first, resulting in grout soup. Then, you’ll try to dry it by adding more powder, but you’ll end up dumping in too much. You’ll repeat this silliness a few times before you get something you can use.
Since you’ve got 1/16″ grout lines, and it’s only a few tiles, you’ll skip the grout float and put on rubber gloves and use your fingers. You will think this will save time. You’ll be wrong. And you will make a holy mess.
You’ll not have masked around the area very well. The black grout will get on your nice painted walls. You will be unhappy.
You won’t have put down a big enough drop cloth. The black grout will get on your nice white tile floor. You will be unhappier.
About three hours into a 2 hour job, you’ll begin to think it’s going so wrong that you’re going to have to tear the whole counter top off and start again (for those amateur psychologists out there, this is called displaced anger).
Fifteen minutes later, you’ll think it would have been better to just buy a solid counter top.
You’ll have spread so much of the mud on the tiles that you can’t clean it off with one bucket of water from the kitchen sink. At this point, you’ll show a little more sense and spend a few minutes in 30 degree weather setting up the hose. It will take 6 buckets of clean water to wipe up the muck.
At around 8 PM, you’ll finally get the grout applied the way you want it. You’ll throw out 90% of the grout you mixed because you mixed too much. You’ll clean up the floor and the walls. You’ll shop•vac the powder you spilled. You’ll clean yourself up. You’ll sit down to relax. Then you’ll remember that the hose is still sitting out in the freezing weather and you’ll spend 10 minutes putting all that away.

That said, it does have its payoff.

finishing the laundry sink – part 2

Tim — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:26:19 +0000

Installers of granite or synthetic counter tops will usually run a bead of caulk or construction adhesive along the top rim of the cabinets, lay the surface in, and let its own weight keep it in place. Since my counter top is made of three layers, I decided to take some steps to make sure they were all firmly connected to each other, and to the cabinets. I also found that that relatively thin width of the substrate to the right of the sink was bowing upwards, so, after running a bead of Liquid Nails along the cabinet edge, I used a few L-brackets to pull the substrate down onto the cabinet and keep the whole thing in place.

Securing the substrate

Then I ran a generous bead of Liquid Nails on top of the substrate to secure the backer board.

Some liquid nails to hold the backer board down

And several drywall screws didn’t hurt, either. I used short screws that didn’t protrude through the substrate.

A few drywall screws finish the job

Cutting stone tiles on a wet saw in sub-40 degree temperatures makes for chilly digits. The first day, I could only work for 30 minutes at a time before I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore and had to warm them up. Not a safe situation when working with power tools. On day 2, I got smart. My secret?

A glove liner...

...covered by a heavy rubber glove

Field tiles were cut with square edges. I planned to run a strip of tile along the edge of the counter top to cover the edges of the substrate and backer board, but I didn’t want the unfinished 3/8″ edge of the granite showing. So, I back-cut the vertical and horizontal edge tiles at a 45-degree angle to give a nice tight grout line along the edge of the counter top.

Back-cutting the edge tiles at 45 degrees gives a finished edge with a tight grout line

The bed of the wet saw accommodated the angle, but, with the fence, wasn’t big enough to handle 1′x1′ tiles on the lower side of the bed – which is what I needed to back-cut in the correct direction. So, I put the fence on the upward side of the table and turned the tiles over the get the correct cut. At 45 degrees, I still could only get a little over 8″ between fence and blade, so that dictated the general size of the tiles. But, the extra 4″ wasn’t wasted – it was used for the vertical edge and backsplash pieces.

Using the adjustable bed to cut 45degree edges

Still wet from the saw: the corner tile, with both edges beveled

Tiles taking shape

Another dry fit. It's starting to look real.

So, now, you’re thinking, “black granite tiles, black granite sink, what a bold design statement.” Yep. That’s it. Also, black’s the only color granite floor tile that Home Depot carries in stock. And, I wanted a big deep single-bowl sink (most kitchen sinks are on 7″ or 8″ deep, this on is 10″), which basically limited me to this model in “granite” or “mocha”. I guess I could have found a stainless sink. But, hey, it does look good.

finishing the laundry sink – part 1

Tim — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:34:16 +0000

Many many months ago, I built the base cabinet for the laundry sink. While finishing the utility room, I installed the cabinet, and there it has sat for months.

Base cabinet

Today I began the process of creating a counter top. I’d looked into solid surfaces, both synthetic and natural, but the estimates for this small cabinet (24″x42″), including sink and faucet, were around $1,000 – most of that the cost of the counter top material itself. Corian can run $50+/sf, and granite starts at $50/sf.

Luckily, one of the granite companies I visited was slow in getting back to me with a quote and stone samples from their warehouse. In the intervening days, I happened to see a spot on DIY about using granite floor tiles as a counter top medium to cut costs. Maybe not glamorous enough for a kitchen or bar, but at only $5.49 per 12″x12″ tile, it’s perfect for the laundry room. (For the mathematically challenged, that’s $5.49/sf, which is about 1/10th the cost of a solid surface).

First, I made a plan and a cut sheet, taking into account the thickness of the tiles to be used as an edging for the counter top. Then I started with a 4′x4′ piece of 3/4 inch plywood and cut a substrate for the top. The piece is a little too large for the table saw, so I used the circular saw. To get a nice straight cut, I like to clamp a level to the board as a guide. I used my 4′ level for the long edge, and my 2′ level for the short.

Plywood substrate

The sink I’ll be installing is black composite granite.

The sink, exposed!

Of course, the sink came with a template for cutting the hole.

Sink template

Five minutes of jigsawing later, and voila!

The Jigsaw

In a wet application, it’s best not to mount tiles directly to plywood. Concrete backer board, such as Durock, will stand up better. Also, instead of a wood edge for the counter top, I plan to cut thin strips of the granite tile to finish the edge. Adding another 1/2″ on top of the 3/4″ plywood substrate provides a heftier edge for attaching those strips.

I used the plywood as a template for the Durock. Backer board is heave stuff, so it typically comes in smaller sheets that drywall. This piece was 3′x5′. For the edge cuts, it’s just like drywall; score one side deep enough to cut the embedded nylon mesh, snap it, then cut the mesh along the back. To cut the sink hole, I used the jigsaw. It tears up a blade, but that’s a small price to pay for the precision.

Laying out the backer board

The Durock in place. I’ll affix it to the plywood substrate with construction adhesive (Liquid Nails) and a few screws.

Cut backer board on top of plywood substrate

The dry fit. It’s a dual-mount sink, meaning it can be under-mounted or surface mounted. I am planning a surface mount because tiling the inside rim of the counter top would be difficult and, more importantly, wouldn’t look good and would be prone to moisture penetration which could compromise the plywood substrate. So it will be permanently installed once the tiles are in place.

Dry fit. Ah, the irony

So the layup is 3/4″ plywood substrate, then 1/2″ of durock. The granite tiles, when installed, will add another 3/8″.

Menage a trois: sink on backer board on plywood. The granite is still in its box and it

Coming soon… part 2 – tiling