Well I’ve been suffering from writer’s cramp. Basically all my subjects are in stagnation. SR 520 Floating Bridge: tolling delayed but nothing else going on; Alaska Way Viaduct: Stupid mayor still trying to obstruct but neither side actually doing anything; Light Rail in Bellevue: City Council still squabbling and nobody has changed sides; Newcastle Library: still digging the foundation, nothing above ground yet.
And that’s about how most everything is going right now. One thing that’s changed is the price of gas: that $4 gas is about the best running stuff yet; I can’t wait to get below a quarter tank again so I can get me some more of that sweet, smooth runnin’ gas.
Therefore the Lake Boren Rapid Transit Report will attempt to give advice. The benefit of giving advice in a blog is that you don’t have to listen to anyone who doesn’t want advice.
Here’s my advice: get a riding mower – those things are so cool. You don’t need a lawn, just go drive it around the local park. Wait, no, that’s not it. The advice is “get a new bathroom sink.” But you need to follow these steps to maximize the fun:
First order a sink on the internet. Its best if the sink is not the right one for your bathroom. Find a cheap sink and order it.
Second get a really expensive faucet set since the current set is not compatible with your cheap new sink. This is a crucial step. If you don’t do these first two the rest is not much of an adventure.
Third take out the old sink and make sure it leaves the premises – recycle, Goodwill, dump, whatever. Just make sure you can’t use it again.
Forth you discover the random sink you bought on the internet won’t fit the hole where the old sink was. Act annoyed for several hours.
These next steps may not have to be in any particular order since you’ve already made it past the point of no return.
Contemplate the idea of rebuilding the bathroom countertop to fit the new sink. This is because the expensive faucet set you bought has passed the 30 day return period so now you really have to use it.
Discard the idea of rebuilding the countertop. This is just wise.
Sleep on it and use the other bathroom. You do have more than one, right? If not why did you mess up your one bathroom? Call a professional.
OK, now you’ve slept on it and the result is that precious faucet set is your biggest investment in the sink project and it’s pretty critical that you use it. So how do we do that with the lowest cost? That’s now the pacing item, as we used to say at work.
Brilliant idea at 3:00 am! Buy a new cheap sink that fits both the existing countertop hole and the new platinum faucet set. What a great idea! The key here is that a new sink is still a fraction the cost of that faucet set so this plan is the lowest cost alternative. And it achieves the original goal of getting a new bathroom sink.
The next steps involve a lot of labor and cussing. We’ve all done this so I won’t bore you. The result is a great new sink with a really snazzy faucet set and the same old countertop that really looks cool with the new sink. What a great job. It only cost double the original plan not counting that expensive faucet set (that we won’t mention the cost of).
Well, another job well done. Until somebody reminds me there’s a perfectly good new sink sitting in the guest bedroom closet. Oh, right, now we have an extra sink. How does one deal with that?
Here’s an idea: we have a summer place (rich people have these too, but we’re only “acting” rich; it’s not really ours). Wow this saga is not over. What great news. I’m still under 700 words and I’m aiming for 1000.
A long time ago the actual summer place owners added a bathroom. As a gesture of goodwill (that word again) we contributed a sink. Completely different type. It has legs and a way to hook it to the wall so it didn’t need a countertop. Well, before it got to the summer place somebody dropped it and it broke. No problem, that’s what they invented epoxy for. By the time I saw the sink again it was ready to be installed but had some really ugly epoxy seems. Imagine my surprise!
Well, amazingly it still holds water and the installation went according to the form book, as Bertie Wooster used to say. So we’ve had a broken bathroom sink in that summer place for a quarter century. Brilliant idea: since we now have an extra sink at home why not replace the epoxy laden sink?
But it requires a countertop. It’s not the kind you hook to a wall and support on a couple of legs. No problem! I just get a chunk of laminate and a little plywood and build a countertop. I can do that standing on my head, as Bertie Wooster also used to say. Bertie had a lot of cool sayings.
All I need to do is visit the local Ace and pick up a few things and poof we have a new sink in the summer place. How hard can that be?
Well, it turns out that here in the glittering Greater Newcastle Metropolitan Area you can’t get a small sink top size laminate (some of us call it Formica). It comes eight feet long. What am I going to do with the other six feet of For, (sorry) laminate? Maybe I can… no that makes a small project into a major project probably consuming my whole summer. I’m a busy man; I’m retired so I don’t have a lot of free time like when I was working.
In addition we have a heater under the sink because there’s no central heating. We need to make sure the countertop is fireproof. This means I can’t just slap a laminate on plywood. More complication and costs.
After discovering all this and before actually buying any materials I decided to see if there was a faucet set that could fit somebody’s budget that would also match the wrong sink I bought several months ago. Here’s the show stopper – nothing that fits that sink can be had for less than the cost of a brick of gold. Wait, that’s how we got into this fix.
Here’s our decision: (This is why everyone respects us from coast to coast and border to border.) We decided that the whole project would benefit from abandonment. Give the damn sink to the Goodwill and quit trying to fit that cheap-ass sink into places that cost an arm and a leg! The sink was cheap. Getting it installed is the cost generator. So that’s the advice from the Lake Boren Rapid Transit Report: If at first you run into a roadblock don’t defy the Revenuers just quit the moonshine business and do something more fun.
Al
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