State of the dust collector...

State of the dust collector...  The left photo below shows the partly assembled dust collector, lying on its side like a crippled minnow.  The large cylinder in the left foreground is the HEPA filter for the beast, and the smaller cylinder in the background is the sawdust/chip collector.  Both of these will be attached once the beast is raised upright.  The right photo shows the variety of small parts that remain to be attached...

Spent the morning picking old caulking...

Spent the morning picking old caulking ... out of the seam between our kitchen sink and the granite above it.  This was the old fashioned translucent silicone caulking, which is a bit of a pain to remove.  The previous caulking job was pretty bad – the caulking wasn't all under the granite; a sheet of it crept over the stainless steel sink.  Over the years since it was installed, the thin parts had worked loose from the stainless steel, and colonies of alien bacteria lived on the trash and dirty water that had infiltrated. 

I picked all that out with a dental pick, then used steel wool and a lot of elbow grease to get the film of translucent silicone off.  That was surprisingly difficult!  I also used steel wool on the sink itself, followed by a course of Barkeeper's Friend (the best stuff I've ever used for cleaning metal); this cleaned and shined up the sink nicely. 

Then I re-caulked with modern, water-clear silicone – and kept the bead completely under the granite.  I finished it using a trick I learned from the guys who installed our bathroom granite: I spritzed the bead with half water/half isopropyl alcohol, then just ran my finger down the bead.  Perfect finish!  The face of the caulk bead is basically vertical.  When it's cured (tomorrow), I'll get rid of any films of silicone remaining on the stainless steel – and then the kitchen sink will be completely finished!

Well, it took all day...

Well, it took all day...  And also four trips to Ace Hardware and Home Depot, and the deployment of an extensive vocabulary of words not often heard in areas so dominated by the LDS church.  I removed all the old kitchen sink plumbing, including the garbage disposal, an under-sink “instant” hot water heater that we never used, all three faucets, and the broken hand soap dispenser.  I then installed a new garbage disposal, new sink drain, and all new plumbing.  Along the way I discovered that virtually nothing under the sink was done in a standard way (the norm for this house, it seems), so several of my trips were to obtain various adapters to make non-standard plumbing play nice with the bog standard new stuff that I bought.

The end result, though, we're very happy with.  The new faucet (and matching hand soap dispenser) are beautifully made Kohler models.  They feel rock solid, and operate just as you'd expect.  The pull-down spray head works great; goes in and out easily, and the hose is quite limp and flexible.  The new garbage disposal is so quiet compared with the old one that when I first tested it, I thought it was broken!  That's despite being twice as powerful.

One sink-related task remains for today: I'm going to strip out all the old caulking (it's an under-counter sink, caulked to the bottom of the surrounding granite) and put new in.  That means a fifth trip, this time to Home Depot to get some decent grout, hopefully in a color that will blend nicely.  I'm also going to use steel wool to thoroughly clean the sink itself, as now it's old grungy appearance contrasts badly with the nice new faucet :)