We have needed a new sink unit for a long time. The one we have is a second hand unit with no doors that we got from a local school when they were upgrading their kitchen. It is made from chip board and has only one door. Recently we found a really good deal on a new but unwanted stainless steel commercial sink… so we bit the bullet and bought it. Now we have to put the new sink in. One afternoon, after the day’s work, we decided to attack this easy project…

I emptied the old sink cupboard and removed all the shelves. Then we disconnected the water in and the water out pipes (more complicated than I had imagined) and moved the old unit out. The cupboard part was a lot heavier than I anticipated, it was damp and smelly and there was a space under the base that specialised in collecting dust bunnies. Once it was out and the elephant sized dust bunnies were collected up, we started putting the new unit together (of course it was flat pack).

Putting the unit in place was, in fact, the easy part. Connecting the water inlets and outlets proved to be a bit of a mission. We were all tired and wanted to sit down by the time we got to water connection, but the job had to be finished because washing up waits for no man.

The holes for the taps had to be drilled into my pristine stainless steel sink unit; I was very nervous and there was much discussion about hole sizes and which drill to use. The holes were drilled and the taps put in without any problem and we were on to the water connection bit. The water inlet had to be screwed onto the tap pipe, which (as it turned out) was nicely hidden by the sink unit itself. My partner couldn’t get his (admittedly large and clumsy) hands into the tiny space, luckily my daughter has much smaller hands which did fit into the space, but it took a very long time to tighten up the connection as she couldn’t see what she was doing and had to rely on touch alone.

Next was the drinking water filter unit. We took the opportunity to change the filters on the unit while the unit was free. This unit just bolts to the wall under the sink and the filters need to be changed every six months. That job went smoothly, but seemed to take forever and the filters were housing a well advanced culture of bacteria and general slime.

With all the essentials connected up, we stacked all the essential stuff that usually goes under the sink (cleaning stuff, tea towels, soap, etc) into plastic containers and shoved them under the sink on the handy shelf. At long last we were ready to relax for the evening.

Now we have a new, easy to clean sink and our kitchen is complete. This kitchen will move with us to the house when it is built, so we consider it an investment to buy long lasting units.

The actual house building is going to take a while as we are still struggling to find the funds to build. If you have advice or ideas, feel free to let us know.