The Powder Room Fiasco 

Ok, so Minna Lackman (one of our past au pairs) asked about the bathroom incident. So I don't have to tell the story 100 times, I figured this was a good place to elaborate. It's not really THAT dramatic, but here goes.

When we had our house painted last year, we chose a faux paint job for the powder room just off the foyer. I told the painter (Antonio), whose English was not perfect, that we would be replacing the towel bar, mirror, etc. in the room and that he should remove everything and patch the holes. After he had finished, the paper roll was still where it was. So when I went to install the new one, the holes didn't line up with the new brackets. After several attempts at getting it right, I had pretty much destroyed the wall around the existing holes. So Antonio had to repaint that area, and you could easily tell where the touch up was done (the problem with faux paint schemes). No big deal, I can live with that goof-up.

After the painting was finished, Eileen decided she wanted a better/nicer faucet in that bathroom. There was a pedestal sink in there, which meant removing the pedestal to install the new faucet. When I went to do that, I first discovered that the way the faucet I had bought weeks prior was made, all sorts of hardware was going to be visible and the various pipes would have to be contorted to fit. It also appeared the faucet had been damaged during manufacturing. So I exchanged the faucet for another one that cost more than $100 more than the first one. When I finally went to install the new faucet, I first had to remove the pedestal, which involves cutting a lot of caulking (it's hard work). Before doing that, I made sure the sink bowl was securely lag-screwed into the wall, which it was. So after removing the pedestal, I checked to make sure the sink would hang on the wall on its own. It seemed pretty solid. I left the room to get my tools and to move the pedestal out. When I returned, I bumped into the sink and it abruptly ripped itself away from the wall and was hanging by the lag screws. It took about an inch or so of the new paint along with it, so the paint job around the sink was ruined. Eileen was not happy, and rightly so.

At that point we needed to decide whether to have Antonio come back and completely repaint that room (it cost $750 the first time) or replace the pedestal sink with a vanity. I hate pedestal sinks for this very reason (they make simple plumbing jobs difficult), and I eventually convinced Eileen that would be a better way to go. So we began shopping. We found a very nice custom-made 24"-wide vanity and a granite top/sink bowl at Home Depot Expo Center. This would set us back about $800. The sales person pushed us to put a deposit down for installation, which she estimated at roughly $150 (though she could not guarantee that). Since installation would involve cutting the baseboards where the vanity would be, I decided $150 would be worth me not having to do it. Well, when the installation estimator came, he left his estimate of $650 with Eileen. I couldn't believe how high it was! I called Expo Center and complained that if I had known such a simple installation would cost that much I would never have put the installation deposit down. I accused them of shrewd business tactics and demanded a refund on principle. They made themselves extremely difficult to contact, but after a few weeks I did manage to get them to agree to refunding the $100. The vanity was still not in after 3 weeks, so we started to get concerned.  I called about twice each week because it became clear they were not going to call us when it came in. After nearly 2 months (!!!) it finally came in, so we drove down to get it.

I have to admit, it is a very nice vanity. Now I had to find a way to cut the baseboards so the vanity would fit flush against the back wall. I decided that rotary tools would work best, so I bought what I thought I would need and borrowed some tools from a neighbor. My first cuts were way off, fortunately just too close together and I could just make two more cuts. This part of the job took about 3 hours not including several hours of shopping for tools. And what a mess it made (not to mention the smell of burning wood that lingered for days). But that part was done.

I proceeded to lag-screw the vanity base to the wall and it fit pretty well along the baseboard. It is high enough that the granite backsplash would easily cover where the paint had ripped. So I proceeded to glue the granite top to the base. Wow, looked great! But I didn't notice the ceramic sink bowl had been glued to the granite in improper alignment until I had already glued it to the base. The overflow hole was off by a good 5 degrees. Oh well, still looks great.

The rest of the job went very well, that is until I went to rehang the oval mirror. The granite backsplash was about 1/2" too high and the mirror would not mount in the same position it had been. So now we would need a new mirror also. But that's okay because neither of us really liked that mirror anyway. But now with a very specific size mirror required, we began shopping again. We looked for an appropriate mirror for what seemed an eternity. Finally, while visiting Rachel in Norfolk we were at one of the area shopping malls and found a mirror that looked like it might work. We measured it and it was pretty much the exact size we needed. And the finish was ornate but not too ornate and consistent with the color of the vanity base. So we bought it. The last piece was finally in place.

This whole project took nearly 6 months to complete, but we are extremely pleased with the results.