Quick DIY bathroom sink pop-up assembly repair

Hi fellow Steemians and DIY enthusiasts

Here with a bit of a quicker DIY post, but still one I wanted to share. I didn't really experience this until we moved into our condo, my parents house never had the issue nor did my apartment. What am I referring to? When you try to raise or lower the sink "pop-up assembly" and it just won't do it! If you're like me, this is something you have, at least in America, have always seen or used but never knew the name of!

source

This is what you raise and lower to stop the water in the sink from draining, or let it drain. I typically only block the sink when cleaning it or when shaving. I try to save water when I can, so I plug it while shaving instead of running the water, every little bit helps!

Tools Needed

There's some very sophisticated tools involved with this work, when I was doing it.

Here we see the incredibly complex bundle of fibers, neurons, tubes and calcium-dense components known as the left hand.

And here we see the same, but much stronger version due to a hardware upgrade necessitated by hard work, known as the right hand.

And the last, but unfortunately invisible element, is a magnetic force. I used the incredibly expensive version available in a toddlers play set, but be careful with it!

The Issue

Have you gone into your bathroom to use the sink, only to find the thing at the bottom is stuck in the sealed position? We certainly did a few months ago and were like ok wtf what happened here? I don't remember when they did but two of our three sinks had this same thing break. (I know, we are kind of spoiled having 2.5 baths, I was surprised to learn there were that many!) Not a huge issue but it's nice to have things the way they are intended. Off to the home improvement store to get something to fix it!

Luckily, a handy dandy child's magnet saved the day.

Just used the magnet to pull it up so I didn't have to take the pipe off or something in order to get at it.

Please pardon the incredibly dirty sink. I only use it to brush my teeth in the morning and at night, which I use some fantastic, but incredibly dirty looking Clay toothpaste that works very well, though looks rough. Sorry, I probably should have cleaned it lol my wife doesn't use it though, so it tends to go a lot longer before I clean it since she doesn't use it!

Raised it a while back but it wasn't working and I couldn't figure out what was going on. Hmm... I finally figured out what was wrong, the pop-up assembly was broken. I wasn't familiar with it since I never saw a broken one before but it's pretty straight forward.

To start, I had to go underneath the sink and find this section. This is the metal piece that connects to the pop-up thing above the sink.

This is what the format of the assembly should look like once complete. It needs to be pointing down on the rod, so the piece that is in the sink pipe is pointing up, keeping the assembly popped up instead of down, which is sealed.

Yes, it's a weird thing in the background. Thankfully it isn't something risque or crazy (although that would be hilarious and awesome), it's just a can of pepper spray, that you will see in the image below lol To the point of the picture though, I had to squeeze the two tabs of the piece of metal that was holding the rod in place.

Once you remove the clip, slide the metal out from the bar.

This is what comes out when you unscrew the cap. It is supposed to be a piece of metal about an inch and a half long pointing into the sink pipe. With the condo, everything they install is cheap, to maximize profits. This was probably just a piece of aluminum or something, instead of stainless steel or copper. It's nice and sharp being snapped off at the end, and quite rusted. Not good!

Don't give that a run along your finger or you will be asking for a tetanus shot.

Fun little contest, what color is that piece of paper on the floor? First person to let me know wins a little bit of free Steem for reading through each section, instead of just scrolling past!

I also cleaned the inside of the pipe, got away the rusted out junk before I installed the new piece of plastic. That was some nasty stuff in there!

This is what the new assembly looks like out of the box. A long piece of metal threaded at both ends, and a plastic ball.

Coming away from the ball is an inch and a half tip or so. The tip is what prevents the sink plug-thing from blocking the sink water from draining. When it broke, I was sure I was missing something. I kept saying to myself, "there's supposed to be something down the pipe, but where is it?" and then I saw what the assembly looked like and it clicked.

You just have to thread the ball onto the metal rod and voila, you've got the internal part of the assembly.

Once you put the two together, you have to put the rod in the clip in a kind of reverse way. The picture I took of it was unfortunately incredibly blurry, so it's not worth showing. The cup with the wings on it above has threads on the inside so it threads onto the pipe, which you can see in the picture near the top where I show the broken piece. Once you put the assembly in, you have to thread it for it to hold. I tried to test it without threading it on and the assembly just popped out because it didn't have what it needed to stay on there.

Looking down the drain pipe at the new plastic pop-up bar. It will be sufficient for what we need it for, though if this was our forever home I would have chosen a copper or stainless steel alternative to make sure it was sturdy and didn't break.

The finished product. The assembly we have seems kind of strange, it doesn't have the little plug there too much higher above the bottom of the sink so the water drains slowly. Perhaps I'll have to get a new one that is longer, if they make it? Anyways, it works and it was something I never knew of before so I wanted to share it with the DIY folks here on Steem! (and Twitter of course)

Got something to share too?

Let me know if you've got something fun in the DIY realm that you did, a story, picture or video and I would love to check it out!

Check out my other DIY posts if you'd like!
DIY STEM Car Engine
Bathroom floor washer dryer
DIY bathroom floor near a toilet
DIY 2011 Nissan Sentra spark plugs
DIY Tomago Cages
Securely Hanging a Cabinet
Joint Compound on Ceiling
Washing Machine Drain Pump
Bubble wrap insulation on a wall
Finish work in the bathroom
Bubble wrap on windows
Laminate floors in a bathroom
Ball joints on a car

This was an entry to the build-it contest, post found here if you'd like to give it an entry!

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