Remodel, Part 2: Downstairs Bathroom

After a long week we’ve finished the bedroom! Everything was painted, including little trim stuff, the hole in the ceiling came out very nicely for an amateur The closets now have removable closet rods, and it’s unbelievable how less crowded your closet is when the clothes rod isn’t buckling and sagging from the weight of the clothes…steel man…what can I say?! We’ve decided to go looking for a new bed frame to match the wood of the room; a nice low-lying platform bed frame would probably be very nice.

My work in the bathroom downstairs has begun. Ligia sealed the grout on the floor tiles, and I started installing the vanity. I had to knock out a few of the vertical tiles at the base of the wall in order to push the vanity as close to the wall as possible. I also discovered that the vanity was made for a horizontal drainpipe – one going into the wall, then curving downward. I didn’t have a 1.5″ hole saw, so I drew in the diameter of the pipe (plus a little extra wiggle room) using a cut-off piece of the 1.5″ pvc drain pipe I had reduced, then drilled a couple of small holes into the base of the vanity, and traced the circle with a jigsaw. The round cut isn’t a perfect circle, but then again when it’s hidden inside a cabinet, who cares? I did a mock-hookup of the plumbing, then cemented a fitting into the drainpipe. It turns out I had to do some drywall patchwork because of removing those three wall tiles…the grout was stuck really well and ripped a bit of the drywall. Ah well, nothing a 4×4 aluminum patch and joint compound won’t fix. The drywall adventure continued with a seam cracking…I guess when the drywall was put in – at least in this particular junction, the drywall was seamed betweens studs – don’t do this please when you’re drywalling…just buy an extra sheet of drywall and cut it properly, or for goodness sake, screw in an extra stud! I barely leaned against this wall, and *cccrraaaack* goes the seam! Oh joy! More joint compound slathered to patch it up! Sanding heaven…yay! Joint compound is like the bondo of walls, except for nobody really cares if that’s joint compound behind a patch of paint or it’s already solidified cousin, drywall, but man people sure do care when you slather on bondo into a dent on a car LOL With the plumbing figured out, next is the plumbers putty and “gluing” the pop-up to the sink. The instructions say to Silicone glue the sink to the vanity…hmm…that just doesn’t sound too sturdy, but hey, what do I know?! My kind of the dilemma now is in which fashion to fasten the vanity to the wall? I could theoretically use 3″ deck screws, but my only concern is that because of the slight angle of the basement floor, there’s a little uneven gap from the top of the vanity running downward, and so the hole in the crappy wood the vanity is made of will eventually give and the thing will move back and forth a little if you lean against the vanity. I wonder if there’s some kind of nut/bolt system I can use…? Then I could drill in the stud, the bolt would be stable, but I’d use a washer and nut on the vanity perhaps to really stabilize it…although the gap isn’t *that* big behind it. I gues this is where a little free Home Depot consulting comes in hehe