On Our Own Again

I wanted to start this post with a thank you to everyone who has helped me in my new home. I have moved very slowly, but without all my friends and family, I would never have been able to make this house what it is now and what is will be in the future.

Thank you to Molly and Doyle for all the weekends of time that you donated and of course all the tools that you have let us borrow.

Thank you to Melanie who has been happy to help, despite having some pretty horrible tasks to do.

Thank you to my parents for three grueling days of work while the whole time sleeping in a dusty house on an air mattress.

Thank you to Kevin, Jody, and Cargill for letting us borrow tools and keeping them for extending periods of time.

Thank you to Chris for her kind house warming gift.

And especially thank you to Brice who has been by my side every weekend and many weeknights, when I am sure that he would rather be doing other things. I bought this house on a whim and he has been dedicated to helping me from the inspection and closing, to filing countless cracks with joint compound. I know he cares about the house, because I care about the house.

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After my parents went back home, they left me with a little something...a cold. Four days later I went back to the house to check on the wallpaper. Still hanging! Now to complete the bathroom.

The vanity and cabinets in the bathroom were in terrible shape. I thought that maybe I could just get new doors for them, but my mother insisted that I should probably just get rid of them. Reluctantly I went shopping for a new vanity, counter tops, and cabinets. We decided on a white 48" Colonial vanity from Lowes. The new vanity was a little bigger than the old homemade vanity, but there was room, and that would help to center the sink on the vanity.



Here is a picture of the new vanity (the top is not included)



We will keep the sink, but will replace the faucet with a Price Pfister bronze one. We will also have to get some bronze hardware.

For the cabinets that were near the toilet



We will replace them with two 24" white modular vanities from Lowes. The vanity and the cabinets will have a matching grey (Misted Zephyr) laminate counter top, that should coordinate with the ceramic tile floor.



As for the upper cabinets, we have opted to just remove them and hang a towel bar or some artwork above the toilet. There should be plenty of cabinet space in the bathroom without them.

Now that I had purchased the cabinets, we could remove the old ones. They were all "custom" (although I prefer the term homemade), layered with paint, and in horrible condition. They also had been built around the baseboards and the ceramic floor was built around them. We purchased some more matching ceramic tiles in case we would need to replace some of them and set to work removing the old cabinets.



Notice the green vinyl on the side of the old vanity. It turns out that the entire bathroom had a vinyl wainscoting of green and pink (at the same time?) and it had been painted over. So we had to remove that as well.



Goodbye ugly cabinets!





I know that it looks bad now, but we will patch some areas with new drywall and then add a smooth coat of joint compound over the glue from the old vinyl. On the bright side, the vinyl has held the old plaster together very well, hardly any cracks in the bathroom!