Blog: Fun with Vessel Sinks

For me, home improvement is often an endeavor born out of necessity. Two months ago I hadn't even heard of the term "vessel sink", but this week I just finished shoring one up because of a leak!

It all started when we found metal fragments and some water under one of our bathroom sinks. The sink had always been a little loose, and someone had been putting their weight on it while leaning over the counter. Since the sink bowl is round, this put a lot of rotational torque on the drain and exacerbated what was probably already a mediocre installation, causing water to get under and corrode the drain's retaining nut until it finally started crumbling.

I had a plumber (one whom I've worked with before) come by and he said he would order a replacement drain, but he never got back to me and ignored my followup message. So, like many areas in which good help is elusive, I had to learn how to do it myself.

That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as I was able to be thorough and do things that the plumber likely wouldn't have done, like replace the decrepit mounting ring under the sink bowl. It also allowed me to discover water damage on the underside of the sink. Apparently, counter material (like granite or, in our case, petrified wood) typically has a thin supporting layer of plywood underneath. Since the wood had weakened due to water exposure, the hole expanded slightly when I was trying to tighten the new rubber gasket and retaining nut. And not to mention, the hole had been cut too large to begin with. So instead of the gasket sitting flush against the underside of the counter to provide a good compression seal, it got wedged right up into the hole!

So, as with many home improvement projects where work leads to the discovery of more work, I had to find a way to add support below the underlayment. I originally went and got PVC trim board (which is waterproof and not susceptible to warping) from Home Depot and a hole saw kit from Harbor Freight. I was about to glue the board to the underside of the counter when I discovered that it would take up too much vertical space along the length of the drain pipe, leaving no room at the bottom of the pipe to connect a plastic tailpiece. Oops. I'll go with the excuse that clearance under the sink is really tight and it's hard to measure things under there, but yeah, that was a rookie mistake.

What I really needed was something thinner like a fender washer. All the washers I found online weren't the right size, so I ended up buying a 4-inch plastic electrical box cover and using the hole saw to cut a hole in it. This turned it into a perfectly sized washer which not only provided the surface area for the gasket to grip, but also spread out the force so that it wasn't all concentrated against the edge of the underlayment. With this washer in place, I was able to reassemble the drain assembly without any further hurdles. Success at last!

So in the end, after some mishaps, I have an installation that I'm fairly happy with. And by doing it myself, I saved at least a couple hundred dollars, got a new tool, and improved some skills. I'm hoping to not have to do this again for a while, but we'll see since the adjacent vessel sink is also a little loose!