June 20, 2019

Scupper 160

Thursday

With the sink in position and some tape on the countertop, I determined the location for the new faucet, a stainless steel lab faucet with a simple yet elegant design suited for this cold water-only installation.  The available clear space on the countertop and the built-in storage area just aft of the sink limited the faucet’s position to the aft starboard corner of the sink, and I ultimately chose a location here that looked right, functioned well with the sink’s position, and avoided some problematic areas beneath the countertop that would have made securing the faucet difficult.  I drilled a 7/8″ hole for the faucet shank through the thick countertop.

Despite a rather long shank on the faucet, the countertop here was too thick to allow for the securing nut to fit on and still leave enough room to thread on the required hose adapter afterwards.  This meant I had to relieve the countertop on the underside to provide enough depth for the fixing nut and hose connection.  To do this, I needed to be able to center a larger hole saw in the just-drilled hole, so I temporarily hot-glued on a scrap of thin plywood so I could start the new hole, after which I used a 2-1/2″ hole saw to remove the bottom fiberglass skin, original plywood core, and part of the original fiberglass top skin.  This gave me enough depth now to secure the fixing nut and washer and tighten the faucet securely into position.

Despite a bloated box of brass plumbing fittings, naturally I didn’t have the fitting I needed to complete the faucet installation:  a female pipe-hose connector in 3/4″ pipe size and for 1/2″ hose.    I looked for a way to adapt with what I had, since not having the right fitting meant I’d have to hold off on the final sink installation, but I had nothing that would work, so I ordered the right fitting and prepared the countertop for the sink installation to streamline that process another time.

Total time billed on this job today:   2.75 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  60°, foggy. Forecast for the day:  Showers, fog, thunderstorm, and eventually rain, 62°