Syllabus- Husband and I sort of doctored it up a bit, using various ideas we found on the Internet. I was sure I'd seen a video that gave us a good nudge in the right direction, but I'll be damned if I can find it now! Isn't that always the way? Lol Basically, the way we did it without any special tools or kits, you need to use the laminate sheets rather than the preformed countertops. Build the base of the counter with your plywood or whatever (we had existing countertops which we peeled the old laminate off of, thereby skipping this step). After you have your sink hole cut to size and you know the position of your sink, what you're basically doing is sandwiching the sink between the plywood and the laminate layer. We cut the sink hole in the laminate ahead of time, then epoxied the sink down to the counter, vey much like you would with a standard sink, just laying it in the hole with the edges overlapping. The video I had seen used automotive putty to taper out the edges of the sink itself, much like you putty drywall to smooth out imperfections. We found the putty wasn't drying, and was instead cracking and shrinking. Plan b, plain old wall repair patch, the stuff I keep around for filling nail holes and dents in my walls. Let dry and sand til smooth so that the hard edge of the sink itself is tapered out a few inches in all directions. I painted over the putty just to ensure a nice smooth surface that wouldn't soften or crumble when we put the adhesive over it. Then we used contact cement for the bulk of the laminate, however at the edges around the sink, we went back to the heavy duty marine epoxy, just to ensure it was a solid adhesion. Lay the laminate over the counter, positioning your precut sink hole over the sink (carefully! You only get one shot here!) and roll out to smooth and remove air bubbles. Lastly, I did a thin bead of silicone around the edge of the sink where it meets the Formica. Clear as mud? This would be so much easier to explain with pics or video!

My father-in-law had Meniere's disease that caused him to retire a few years early from being a Minister of the Gospel. His specialist told him he had no cure for the condition, but since it seems to be associated with the inner ear, it will reduce with hearing loss, and that is what happened to him. One day when at an airport on his way to a convention, an attack struck him. The airport security was convinced that he was either drunk or high on something and locked him up in the drunk tank, and would not let him out until his wife came to pick him up. He was unable to convince them that he had a medical condition that was the cause. This episode made him consider retiring a few years early.

$80 would be rock bottom. Not sure I‘d trust anyone who charged the same amount as a counter top. This is much harder than you think. The material has to actually be able to travel through the house and through the bathroom door. Very often, that route isn’t large enough to have that happen, and walls must be taken down, and rebuilt, just to get it in the bathroom. Now, the bath walls have to be super flat and plumb. That requires reframing all of lf them, or sistering all of them. Before the job is ever templated. You don’t get to cut a faucet hole in it after it’s installed. Your shower stub outs are fixed in place, and this has to fit precisely. Plus the stainless lugs in the studs that this has to mount to, etc. $100 a square would be more the starting point. And only a very few folks in each region are going to really have the skill to start thinking about this.

Bluemoonlight. because of what you said I bought two Negronne and I am going to give one a try in ground. I think it's too late to let any one fig tree to get established but I will plant as soon as spring hits and keep them asleep on my cold porch for now. That dark fruit looks so tasty and sweet! Thanks everyone, it's so good to see some have having productive trees grown in winter climates as cold as I get! Dee, I plant mine up almost against my home on the side that faces south and out of wind to create a different zone for it. Probably a zone 7 or even better on how well I insulate it. Then I will tie all the branches together once they are bare for the winter and then wrap insulation around them from the top to the ground, then put a plastic bag over the insulation to keep it dry. I also mulch mine about a foot up all around the trunk and 2 feet away all around. That's ii. That is my way. Many different ways to do it. Some use chicken wire and make a circle that fits over the tree that allows you to fill leaves all the way to the top and then mulch the trunk area in. This works too. I have done that. As long as the ground does not freeze hard and that you protect the branches and trunk from sub- 0 weather and the cold nasty winds, you should be fine. We are lucky that trees go dormant and need to during this time. You should try it.