The Bathroom Vanity Has A Sink!

I am having a fairly-important guest over in a few days (a long-time clock collector friend of mine, along with another collector friend of his), and in anticipation for his visit, I've decided to tackle several small projects around the house. One of these was finishing the built-in (the previous post), and one of the others was installing the sink in the bathroom. The third big project (a surprise) is nearly finished, but I don't think it will be ready in time for this weekend.



Now, if you're an avid reader, or a close friend, you might be asking yourself: "Wait... didn't you want marble for the vanity?" and the answer is YES! This was a compromise for now. This pine counter top cost about 30$ (10$ of pine, 20$ for the varnish). Let's call it a "temporary" top. I don't know when I'll have the cash to get a custom marble top (it could be another few years) so for now, this is a decent alternative. From what I gather, the marble top would be in the range of 300$ - 400$ installed. I still have loads of other large expenses, so in the meantime I want to use my sink/vanity (especially for guests).

Alright, so for those who were wondering about the spoiler image in the last post, it was the vanity top underneath the drawer fronts.



I used some pretty nice clear-ish pine (with very few knots) and glued up the slab. I had to make it in two sections, plane them, and then glue them in the centre with one glue joint (to sand). This is fairly typical for gluing large panels that need to be planed (my planer is only 12", and most large ones are only 20"). I buy my pine from "the big orange box" as rough boards 12" x 1" thick. These are dirt cheap because they are not planed or prepped in any way. The majority of the boards have large knots (because pine trees have lots of branches - which is something people don't seem to understand when they want "no knots") and other defects like cracks, broken edges, or bad knots (dark ones that are likely to fall out). HOWEVER, if you have the patience to sort through the boards, you can find some REALLY nice ones. These boards are about 1.20$/sq.ft. or less which is pretty good. In addition, this is kiln dried, and perfect for furniture.

So. Since I plan to eventually reuse this sink for the marble top (whenever that might be), I wanted to keep the original paper template for the stone company. I traced a copy, and used that for my pattern.



It's important to try to cut this oval as accurately as possible. This is HARD, and any screw-ups end up being very obvious. As a side note, I bought a brand new jig saw to cut this, so I guess TECHNICALLY the top cost 30$ + 160$. I bought the saw on sale/discount as well (120$), but then I got stuck also buying 20$ of blades plus the taxes. It's not a waste, however, because I've wanted to buy a decent jig saw for several years now. It will come in handy for a multitude of projects.



This is after sanding, and routing the profiles on the edges. A large round over on the sink lip, with smaller round overs on the other edges. I couldn't wait for a bit of a preview, so that's why the faucet is sitting in place.



I wanted this to be WATERPROOF, so this vanity top got FOUR coats of spar (marine) varnish in a high gloss. This was taken on the second or third coat.



Since the sink is under-mount, I had to make custom clips for it. When stone is used, they also have a few special clips that fit into slots cut in the stone, plus they also use adhesive. My brackets were made from hard maple. The sink edge is uneven in thickness, so I had to make some of these slightly different sizes.



Note the pencil lines at the front edge. These were to show how close I could get to the front edge of the cabinet.



I haven't decided if I should install a backsplash or leave it like this. I wanted a backsplash with the marble, but since this is temporary, I don't know if I should bother. You can see that I had even planned out the height of the wall outlet for the backsplash.







It took 7 years to get to this point. I still remember the sink that used to be here. Side note: There is white caulking along the inside top edge to seal the gap, but otherwise I fit the sink in place only with those brackets (which are quite tight, but not waterproof).



BEFORE:





I'd say even if the top stays just pine, it's a slight improvement over what was there before, yes? I still cringe at some of the old photos. The house is nearly unrecognizable in many places, but in a good way.

Victorian Farmhouse - Part 16 Bathroom

Alright folks, it's currently 11:14pm and we'll see if I can put up THREE posts tonight. I have posts regarding the bathroom, upstairs hallway, and the salvaged front door ready to post about.

I'm at the point where I'm so far behind that I'm skipping some boring bits, and hopping around between projects, so posts might not be in correct chronological order, however, they will be more focused on specific areas. Hopefully no one really cares about that and they just enjoy the photos and the progress.

As of right now, the floors have all been refinished, and half the main floor is all beautifully painted. We did have one major disaster but I'll get to that later.

So the bathroom. In order to be able to have a working toilet, and install the drywall, we decided to pull out the old one, fix the floor, and sand the area around the toilet.

We also filled the back wall with insulation and installed vapour barrier.

You can see the board that was chopped for the plumbing. This was poorly nailed, so I cut and fit a new one.



In case Pierre and Angie (or any future owner) needs to pass any wires up to the attic, we built a small wooden trough to prevent the insulation from trapping the wires.



Insulation installed, and new floor patch, bracing, etc. installed.



New moisture proof drywall, and the floor partly sanded. Pierre and Angie had the floors professionally sanded, but we did just this part around the toilet, and at the edge of the bath.







Light switches and outlet above sink.



At the time, we weren't sure what kind of wood this was. It has very little grain, and slight colour changes. It's definitely a hardwood, and I suspected it might be Basswood. It turns out I was correct.





Bath Installed:



Toilet Installed. Quick story about that! This is the 3rd or 4th toilet we had to buy before we had one that fit correctly. The sandard spacing from the drain to the wall is 12". This one was closer to 11" or 11.5". The nice toilet (identical to this one) that P&A had bought did NOT fit. There was about an inch difference and no way to cheat the spacing. The other toilet they had (for downstairs) also didn't fit, and we had also got another toilet very early on (used) and I think that one was returned.

When we went to a local store, we checked all the toilets, and even though the spacing was supposed to be standard, it really wasn't. Generally the spacing is called the "backset" but most toilets DON'T TELL YOU what it is. We looked at all the floor models on display and measured them. We found this toilet below (same as the one they liked) and luckily it was pretty well priced. This is something you definitely need to check when renovating an old house.

Vanity!

Before going into the vanity install, I'll show off the finished living room ceiling repair.

The white primer shows up a lot more in the living room, and I'm going to go ahead and guess that one of the POs (who smoked) used to spend more time in this room. That, and I think a little bit of the old shellac is also bleeding through the white.

The ceiling repair in this room was made much more complicated because of where I had to cut-back the old ceiling (last year). It was also made more complicated because the boards I had on hand were only JUST long enough to reach the nearest stud before the light fixture. Luckily I had enough other bits from the Office to do the short ends.

Before (as in, how it's looked for the past year):





Quick side note: look at that wonderful wood peeking through! The ceiling was originally done in shellac over choice lumber. It would have looked wonderful several decades ago. Wood ceiling, wood crown, window and door casings, and old wooden windows. And if you remember correctly, the living room used to be a bright peacock blue originally.

Here are the "short ends" in place. The one contouring the electrical box was fun to cut. My jigsaw is kinda "dead" so I cut that BY HAND with a coping saw. Not only did I cut it by hand, but I cut it TWICE, since I mis-measured the first piece.



You can just barely tell which are the two new lengths (and it wasn't even puttied or patched at this point), but near the wall, you can see a wider gap where the two new boards were fitted (much like the office ones).



Lots of putty, sanding, and silicone later, and with a quick coat or primer, you can barely tell it was repaired. Note: the entire ceiling will get repainted later on.



Now for the vanity. This was a pain, and I knew it WAS going to be one, but it's over and done now.

Why a pain? Well, just because of all the detailed fitting and installation.

First I shut off the water, drained the pipes and de-soldered the shut-off valves. Then I did a small modification to the hot water pipe's location. I decided I didn't want them using up almost all of the back portion of the cabinet. This gives me the space to make/install a custom storage rack on the left side (if I want).



Then there was the actual fitting of the vanity into place. The following photo had terrible yellow lighting (mainly from the bright CFLs in the sconces), but you can see several important details in it. I knew I was going to need to lift and replace the vanity in it's spot (over the two pipes) several times to make sure all my scribing and fitting was good, so I chose to protect the walls and door casing with a double layer of large paper sheets from a big roll that I have. Alternatively, thin cereal box cardboard would also work well. It's not the end of the world to have to do a paint-touch-up, but it's much easier to just avoid it completely.

I chose to drill the drain hole last, to get the most precise location possible, which is why you won't see the hole in the first photo(s).



In the above photo, you can see that I have the baseboard cut, and the vanity slid down to he floor. It has also been raised up off the floor slightly and levelled using shims. Everywhere on the vanity edges where you can see green painter's tape, is a spot that needed scribing.

Because the house has a lot of settling towards the centre (as is usual with older homes), the side near the toilet had to be cut-down by about 3/4". It also had to be scribed along the relatively uneven edge of the tile floor. My tiling job was fairly good, but the tiles themselves still have quite a bit of texture and bumps. The best way to mark your scribing is to have the cabinet level, and then, starting at the highest spot off the floor, make yourself a block of that height, with which to trace along the bottom of the cabinet all the way around. At the high spot, you will barely make a line, but as you go around the cabinet, the height of the scribe line will get higher up where more material needs to be removed.

In ideal cases, the scribing is minimal, and you can sometimes just use shims (especially if your toe-kick gets attached separately). At work, all our cabinet boxes use adjustable plastic legs (which you can nail into and cut-down if needed).

Part of the "huge pain" was to remove that 3/4" section off the left side of the cabinet. Remember, this is solid rock maple. I have no working jig saw. I ended up cutting 90% of it with a circular saw*, a bit of it with a router (using a straight bit), some of the corner chunk with a hand saw, and then up to the line with my (crappy) belt sander with a coarse 80 grit paper.

*Tips: when running any tool over a pre-finished surface, always mask it with tape, paper, or some other thin protective film. This will keep the surface scratch-free. You will be surprised how easily just sliding a router over a varnished surface can leave fine scratches.

Other areas that needed scribing were minimal (along the door casing, and a bit along the back wall).

Additional side note: The piece of twine that you can see under the vanity toe-kick was a loop used to go around the hot water pipe (and then around my foot). The pipe had just a HAIR of a lean towards the back wall, which made it impossible to slide the cabinet down onto the pipe without a second pair of hands. Since I'm doing this job solo, this worked out just fine.

Once all the fitting and trimming was done, and I had a sturdy, level cabinet; I re-soldered my shut off valves.

Safety first. This is a wooden cabinet, and a blow torch could very easily scorch the varnish, or make the wood catch fire, so I used a piece of metal flashing as a guard against the back.



Checking for leaks is always a bit scary for me since I have to run up and down two flights of stairs (from the second floor all the way down to the basement). Luckily all my pipe joints were good, and I had a leak free installation. Just in case, though, I had bunched-up a large bath towel around the base of the pipes in the cabinet.

The only thing left now, is to attach the hardware (I need 4 extra hinges), and screw it to the back wall. I'm waiting to screw the cabinet to the wall because I want to use some special screws from work with beige-painted washer-head tips.

These next few photos turned out really well, and the colours are quite accurate.





You can just make out the recessed toe-kick in this last photo.



So what do you guys think? White marble for the top? Granite? Soapstone? I would definitely prefer a solid counter top (stone or Corian) with and under-mount sink (which I already bought). But I'm still not 100% sure what to go with. White marble would definitely look classic/elegant/historic, but would it go well with the slate floor? Am I just second guessing myself? I don't necessarily like things that are too "matchy-matchy" but I'd be really interested in your thoughts and suggestions (as a fresh set of eyes).

Bathroom Indecision

BATHROOM:

The bathroom is STILL not done after living here for nearly 2 years (coming up April 30th). Most of the work was done by about the year-and-a-half mark. All that's left in the bathroom is cabinetry, a door, , fan cover, and plumbing (sink/faucet though the faucet is already bought).

I've been tossing around lots of different ideas for the bathroom for *months*. I want something nice, something vintage looking, and something that doesn't look too "perfectly built-in". I really liked the idea of using an old piece of furniture as the vanity, and putting a marble or granite top on it, but I don't like the idea of having a dead space along the wall next to the door (which will just trap dirt/dust/hair). However, I had set up the sconces and plumbing with that idea in mind (the lights would be perfectly centred over the sink, and everything would line up. So should I compromise my original idea for the vanity, and go with something asymmetrical, and built-in up to the wall, or stick with the nicer looking, but slightly more impractical idea? I say impractical, because having the vanity top continue up to the wall would give me more counter space (about 4") and I could put something like glass canisters/candles in the corner.

These are some of the ideas I had for the vanity. If I go with a centred cabinet, I would make it symmetrical (2 doors and maybe a false drawer at the top), whereas if I go flush to the wall, I would want 3 drawers near the wall, and a door on the left (otherwise the doors would be off centre from the sink and that would drive me nuts).





I quite like the look of this one:



I also haven’t decided what I want to use for the vanity. I want wood. Either birch, Maple, Oak, Ash, Cherry, or Mahogany (though the last two would be pricey). But I want dark brown or a reddish orange (like old cabinetry).

As for the vanity mirror, I had originally wanted this:



But it will need to stick out of the wall at least 4", and I'm not convinced that it will look good between the sconces. So now I'm thinking about using a flat mirror on the wall (see farther down).

If I have no medicine cabinet, I'd need another storage option, so I was thinking about making a wall cabinet (non matching) to go over the toilet, between the window and corner stack. The only possible issue there, is the possibility of dropping something into the toilet if I’m clumsy :S But as far as room (space for having a cabinet sticking out of the wall), and placement (free space around it/looks) it would work fine.

Here’s how the room looks (as a refresher).

From the hallway looking in:



Where the vanity will go:



I have this really nice antique bevelled glass mirror that I’ve been thinking of using. I even think I would leave it with it’s “shabby chic” distressed mint-green paint.



It fits the space nicely, and it would look like this (isn’t it fun to have a tripod!?)



This is the spot where I would put the wall cabinet. I would only make it 4" or 5" deep.



And here are some ideas for a wall cabinet. I could make it in any wood/veneer, and in just about any style. I would not use clear glass (if I go with a glass door). I’d use frosted glass, or a wood door instead.







I have more images of wall cabinets in this album:
https://picasaweb.google.com/100215997649394579880/HouseInspiration?authuser=0&feat=directlink

I need input.

Uhh...

I'm running out of interesting titles for these random update posts.

I wanted to let my readers know that due to the Photobucket issue, I've been feeling really bummed out about posting anything, since the photos won't show. I'm thinking about paying for a Pro account, and I'm also thinking of adding a "Donate" button at the bottom of the page. As if fixing the house isn't expensive enough as it is, now I'll be forking out money just to post my photos.

But I'm finding that this house reno is really important for me, and a lot of my viewers enjoy seeing the progress. I've actually picked up a few new subscribers in the past few days. I'm up to 19 now! I suspect that I have a lot more casual viewers, however, since some of my recent photos have view counts in the upper hundreds.

Update on the house:

Work has still been ongoing. I never really stop for more than a few days, and I try to do a little something each day. I recently demolished the "power room" in the basement (entirely), in order to start repairing/redoing the duct work for the last corner of the 'L Room' and one vent in the Office.

I also went out and purchased half my hinges yesterday. This was a rather irritating shopping adventure. Home Depot had only a few of the hinges I wanted, so I had them order 20 (enough for 10 doors. I only need 8 sets, but I wanted a few spares), so the lady gave me the item number and told me to call-in and check in a week or two to see when they came in. So I called on Friday at around noon, and the guy over the phone said they had 27 of them. Perfect!

So after work, I head over to HD (partially by bus, and partially on foot since it's all the way across town) and I go to get the hinges. They have something like 15 on the shelf, and 3-4 are ones that were previously opened and taped-up so I didn't want those if I'm paying full price (since they might have missing screws or be scratched, etc). I ask the guy in hardware where the other dozen are, which they have in stock, and he checked over the shelves for them (with a ladder) and he didn't see them. He also went to check in the back, and couldn't find them.

Apparently, they are definitely THERE somewhere in the building, but it was a mess at the back, and they had not been put away yet, since there was a truck being unloaded (or some such horse shit excuse). I was NOT happy. I went all the way there since I was told they had them in stock, only to end up getting HALF the hinges I needed. So now I have to go back AGAIN.

While I was there, I also finally picked up one of those basement 'backup preventing drain covers' which cost an arm and a leg (nearly 20$). I've wanted to buy one for about a year and I finally just put it in my basket and bought it. It's not like it's the expensive, I just feel like it's a very over priced item. But I'd much rather pay 20$ now and not have to clean up some overflowed sewage water later.

I also got a replacement rim lock for my dad's bathroom door. This lock has been non-functional for as long as I can remember, so I checked it out one of the last times I was there. Dad said he couldn't find one that was a matching size, and it's a standard 2 1/4 - 2 1/4 type, which is the easiest to find.

Last night I stripped off the lacquer for the set of 10 hinges and the lock parts (since all of dad's locks and plates are pretty antique looking by now - his house is from the 1950s).

Today I might work on duct work, or continue working on the electrical panel/wires.

Antique Toilet?

I just went to the bank, and I passed by the foursquare on the end of the block from my house. The new owners are doing repairs/renovations (nothing too drastic that I noticed), but I did happen to see an awesome looking antique toilet lying in a pile in the yard next to their shed. This is the kind of toilet with the separate tank at the back, and I believe the tank is made of wood or copper. From the road, I could see that it still had a seat, the tank, and the connecting pipe, and it didn't look broken, so I might just go poking around and ask them if they're tossing it.

The toilet in question looks similar to this one:

Bathroom Reno (Part 2)

Next came the vapour barrier and drywall. One of the reasons that I took down all the drywall was because A: it was super super dirty and gross, and B: because I wanted moisture/mildew proof drywall. This stuff is twice the price of regular drywall, but if it gets wet (and it did*) it won't rot.

* The drywall was in the garage after it was delivered, and I had not fixed the door/seal yet, so when it rained, all the bottom got wet.

I also had to cut the hole for the fan, which was pretty much terrifying, since I'd be disturbing the (probably) asbestos-contaminated insulation. So I went about this very slowly and carefully, and I pushed/slid the insulation out of the way for the most part. Cutting the hole was the most nerve-wracking, but I got it done.





I wanted a seamless edge for the fan, so it was installed using a wooden box/frame, which was mudded flush with the ceiling.





From the hallway side, I also installed some recycled mouldings. The top crown for the door was the piece that was on that bookshelf-thing in the wall in the office, and the side pieces and plinths were a mix of old and new.











Doing the joints/corners/seams in the drywall took forever. I have learned to hate it. In the end, the walls turned out pretty good, but the ceiling could have been better. It's still better than many other places in the house, though.

Here is the room primed:















Then I had to decide on a colour. Originally I wanted this one:



Which is the same as the colour on the right:



But I found it was too pink, and too dark. I was pretty disappointed since I had already bought the 50$ can of paint. I ended up using the lighter colour.

Window trim (also reused/salvaged bits and pieces).







The bottom piece of trim did not get made until much later.

COLOUR! For the most part, I've always lived in a white house (some wallpaper, but I don't count that) and even my apartment was all white. So this was a welcome change. I had wanted a more taupe/grey shade but I still like this.









The sconces were some of the cheapest I could find that had a classic look, with a chrome finish. I think they were 35$ each plus tax.

The cover that came with the fan did not fit, but it's hideous anyways:







The next step was to finish the bath surround so that I could shower in my own house! I had been walking over to my mom's house, 3-4 blocks away to shower.

I bought a neutral, "hotel style" fabric curtain, and a liner, as well as a fancy chrome tension rod.









Continue in Part 3...