The Gift

Peggie has been doing a lot of fabric dying. Our patio looks like a redneck laundromat. We have a galvanized wash tub on a loose cinderblock stand with a garden hose going to it. The used water drains through a hole in the bottom of the tub, down through the blocks and into the yard, where it makes.....mud. We have a clothesline strung on the patio. (For you youngsters, that is a small rope used in the olden days from which wet clothes were hung to dry in the sun. Think of it as a solar powered dryer with no moving parts.)
Peggie has been lusting after a "professional" setup with a multi-tub sink, plumbing, and drainage, under a shade cover. For her birthday last year, I said I would do the installation when she found the sink(s) she wanted.
She found one. On Craigslist. A three-tub stainless steel restaurant sink with drainboards on both ends. (For  you youngsters, a drainboard is a sloped surface near a sink where dishes are washed and rinsed and dried by hand.  !!!!!)
So, now that we have air conditioning that makes it comfortable to stay indoors, I am cleaning up this grungy sink salvaged from a boarded-up dive bar downtown. Did you ever try to scrub stainless steel in the full sun? Well, don't. Just stare right at the sun for five minutes if you want to go blind.
And, guess what? The plumbing set-up requires a trip to a restaurant supply store AND the home improvement super store.
Before the next post here, the betting windows will be open. How many trips to the store will I really need? Pick a number higher than one and less than a hundred, place your bets in the comments section. Winners will be announced when the job is complete. Good luck to all of us.