We installed the sink today, ticking yet another item off the punch list.
Our sink is a reclaimed stainless steel double basin sink that we bought from the Rebuilding Center. Old stainless sinks are durable inexpensive, lightweight, and environmentally friendly, satisfying four of my five requirements for a tiny house. The fifth one is aesthetics, which I’m not thrilled about but it’s growing on me and I think it’s right for the space.
After endless searching and debate we ended up buying a cheap faucet from Amazon. I would much rather buy something reliable from a name-brand but if you read the reviews the lower end name-brand faucets have just as many problems these days as cheap Chinese crap. We couldn’t find anything that had both styling we like and a relative certainty of reliability until we got into the $700+ range which I’m just not going to spend on a kitchen faucet and vintage faucets waste too much water and aren’t nearly as user-friendly. So we just got a faucet that looks good with good reviews and we’ll see how long it lasts.
Working around the farmhouse style counter with the shelf underneath presents challenges for P-trap clearance, but fortunately my method of waiting to install the drain pipe until the last possible minute helps to compensate for the tight installation.
The drain pipe location is determined by the fact that it’s a pretty bad idea to drill a 2 inch hole in a 2 x 4 wall or a 2 inch hole in a steel trailer frame, so that leaves coming up inside the wheel well, which seems like a problem but the distance between the wheel well and the wall creates the opportunity to swivel that section of pipe to literally anywhere in the vicinity and the opportunity to do it very late in the build which is super convenient if you’re like me and you can never decide on a sink until the last minute. It’s also simple to rebuild if you make a mistake. Note the autovent at the top of the stack for venting.
Having lived small for many years I strongly favor a full size, full-depth double basin sink even in a tiny house. I’m out of space here so I’ll have to explain why in detail in another post!
-Brian
