We Built A Sink!

Today, we’re jumping back to our week on the property in early November. We only covered half of it in the last episode because there was a lot to discuss!

This week, we talk about Thanksgiving, digging, building a rock staircase, and building a sink! We also discuss how hard it can be to collaborate with someone you love, and how bickering is often inevitable but we have to keep being patient with ourselves and each other.

There's still so much to do, but incremental progress is still progress. Hang in there.

Welcome to The Grid Is For Squares! Today, we’re jumping back to our week on the property in early November. We only covered half of it in the last episode because there was a lot to discuss!

But before we get to that, we talk a little about Thanksgiving. It was especially problematic this year—what with the whole gathering during a global pandemic thing—but like most stories that involve indigenous people and white people, Thanksgiving is pretty problematic in general. So we talk about the real story behind Thanksgiving and how so little of what we tell ourselves about our own history is true. Part of growing up, as an individual and as a society, is not turning away from difficult truths. You can learn more about the real story of Thanksgiving here.

So, let’s get back to our Harvest Festival week on the property in November. The biggest project we tackled was building an outdoor sink!

One of the things I’ve been missing on the property is washing my hands in a real sink. But I’ve also just wanted to keep learning more carpentry and challenging myself to make increasingly complex projects, so a sink seemed like a good next step. You can read more about how we built it below.

This brings us to a less fun (but still important) discussion… when Vince and I work together on projects, we often end up bickering, which sucks! We generally communicate well in our relationship, but when it comes to projects, all that good communication seems to go out the window. Vince is very meticulous, which I totally respect, but I’m always more excited about improvising and making discoveries. Obviously there’s a lot I don’t know (like I would never rush in headlong with power tools), but I also want the freedom to make mistakes and learn as I go. So he gets frustrated when he sees me “doing it wrong” and I get frustrated when he “tells me what to do” and we end up bickering. But collaborating on construction projects is new for us, and let’s not forget that this is an incredibly stressful year for everyone, so we need to be patient with ourselves and each other. At the end of the day, we’re all on the same team.

But building a sink (and arguing about building a sink) was far from the only thing we did on our property that week. Now that the rainy season has started, we can have campfires again, so we cut and stacked a lot of firewood. Vince’s mom also worked on our rock staircase, a very cool feature made from chunks of local granite. We all did some digging in the yurt site, digging holes for support posts and using the extra soil to build a road from the driveway to the site. And we’re getting close to finishing the greenhouse build… we almost have enough homemade bricks to line the exterior walls and hold the sand and hardware cloth in place.

There’s still so much to do, but incremental progress is still progress. Patience isn’t my strongest suit but I’m trying. And when I think about the difference between Thanksgiving 2019 and Harvest Festival 2020, I realize that we really have accomplished a lot. There are no shortcuts, we just have to keep at it.

WHAT WE BUILT

Sink table: Plywood, 2x4s for the legs, 1x4s for the facing

2 silver bowls from the thrift store for the sink bowl and soap holder

Plumber’s putty to fit the sink bowl in place and a pop-up drain

PVC pipe and a 5-gallon bucket to catch the water