Upgrading from our makeshift plywood countertops to these puppies was the thread that pulled everything else together. Once in, the kitchen felt like, well, a kitchen again. But we still weren’t using it. Why? No running water.

The faucet you see in the pic above was just balancing in place. This is the one that we went with:

But anyway back to the process…

One of the coolest things about the LG Hi Macs solid surface countertops is that the sink is integrated. Meaning that it is literally part of the coutnertop. Flush. Seamless. Awesome. This was one actually one of the main reasons we went with solid surface (after making sure they were awesome in all the other truly important areas like heat, stain, and durability). So with everything installed, last Saturday was my day to connect the plumbing.

Chestnut was quick to point out the fact that we had a bit of a whole in our sink.

Actually, the first time he did this I about knocked myself out. I was laying under the sink all plumber style eyeballing all of my connections when suddenly something from under the sink grabbed my head. I bobbed around, slammed my forehead into the base of the sink only to find that Chestnut swatting his paws around.

If you’ve followed us on this blog much, you know I’ve connected a couple of sinks in my day like in this but I had never tackled something as complicated as the pvc jungle under this cabinet plus the garbage disposal.

So I watched a couple of these fairly unhelpful YouTube videos and got to work.

It actually wasn’t as bad as I originally thought because we had opted to turn a dual drain sink into a single drain sink so I only had to run half of the pipes.

I just connected a p-trap to the closest waste pipe, ran that to the disposal, tightened all joints and was good to go. Or so I thought.

Everything looked great and ran well but there were 2 minor drips which had to be taken care of. The first one was user error. I had installed one of the gaskets backward. A quick flip fixed that in no time. But I still had another drip to care for that I couldn’t figure out. The disposal was leaking from the side.

I learned that there are three places that a disposal can leak from:

1) The top (this means the drain flange itself is loose and just needs a fresh new coat of plumbers putty)

2) The bottom (this can mean that parts have rusted out and you may have a more serious problem on your hand)

3) The side (rubber gasket issue)

Lucky for us, we fell into category number 3. I bought a $3 gasket from home depot and changed it out at the pipe.

2 screws later we were back in business with a running, functioning sink.

I then proceeded to connect the dishwasher. It was a pretty simple task until I got down to the whole give-it-power-thing. Katie suggested that I turn the power off (like you are supposed to) while connecting the dishwasher but I shrugged it off and learned pretty quickly which wire was the hot wire.

Eventually though we got that connected too and began doing dishes and putting things away.

Here’s a sneak peak at how everything is now REALLY coming together.