The Kitchen Sink

I mentioned in a previous post that I was having trouble finding clips to install my new kitchen sink, so I thought I’d explain. The reason I don’t have clips to install the sink is because I didn’t actually purchase the sink. If I had bought it new I probably wouldn’t have this problem. Because I would just take it back to the place I got it. But I found it.

I was driving home from church or something one day about a year ago and was close to Route 3 in Bedford, Massachusetts. I saw, on the side of the road, put out for the garbage people a stainless steel sink. Normally, I would have just driven past, but our house was built in 2004, and it had really, really crappy sinks and fixtures (the faucets squeak when you turn the knobs). Our place was not custom-built, and it is really nice in many ways, but the kitchen and bathroom fixtures are where the builder cut corners. There are worse places to cut corners, but it has bothered me that the kitchen sink is shallow and small. I wash most of the dishes in the house, and most will not even fit in said sink. And this sink, the one by the side of the road, was really quite nice.

We had just purchased a new faucet, bouyed by optimism when my wife achieved tenure at the University, but I didn’t want to just install it in the crappy, shallow sink. So I grabbed the one by the side of the road (turns out somebody threw away a sink that retails at about $500, but I didn’t know that at the time). This sink, in perfect condition, otherwise, only had two clips attached, and one of them was broken. And these things are very specific to the manufacturer.

Suddenly, with my wife and son on a road trip, I found myself last week with the prospect of some additional time on my hands, and nobody to complain if I didn’t do dishes until I solved the sink problem, so I dove in. I tried to order the clips, but the suppliers online weren’t able to promise I’d even get the clips for three weeks or more, so I decided to just make them. Pretty much used up the whole weekend, plus part of Friday, doing that.

I bought a bunch of brass picture hooks, and routed out the hole where the nails go, widening it enough to accept a #6 sheet metal bolt, 3-inches long (see picture below-clicking to make it bigger).

Then I clipped these things to the bottom of the sink and threaded them through holes made in the aluminum bar, put a wing-nut on the bottom (see picture below, blah, blah).

And then the thing worked pretty well (click to enlarge). Turns out that the whole picture-hanging machine screw set-up is very similar to what Kohler sink clips, although I didn’t know that until after I made my first six.

I think it was, after all, worth the effort. I’m ordering some from the factory anyway, to make the whole thing even more secure. But in the mean time, there is no danger of it flying away.