Making a custom powder room vanity

At one point early on, I had a vision for the vanity in the powder room. It's a small space so I din't want to take up a lot of it with a full vanity and pedestal sink. I wanted something floating and wall mounted. I showed John a picture and said "This is the basic idea."

And his interpretation: build a floating vanity out of our old lumber that used to be holding up our house. That's him milling the lumber in our back yard.

Then it looked like this for a while:

Then like this:

And then:

Stay tuned for the final reveal next week!

First shower walls!

And there are the tub shower walls!

First sighting of the floor tile!

I did something really lazy: I picked one porcelain tile that I love and it's going in all 3 bathrooms and the laundry room.

Here's the reason: I am trying to create cohesiveness in a house that was all over the map in terms of style, functionality, space planning and floor layout. It is still not perfect but it's really good and a HUGE improvement to how it was before.

One way to create cohesiveness is to stick with a very tight color palette that gets carried throughout every room.

Each bath has very distinct and unique features which will stand out against the foundation of the gray floor.

For months I carried around the sample in order to color match it to the other textures and finishes in each room. And then the boxes of tile sat in the garage for the last 6 weeks, just waiting.

And now, it's in. And it's even better than I imagined.

Doors are in!

In the morning they were leaning in the future places.

In the afternoon they were all in!

How I assembled the laundry cabinets

About 3 weeks ago, I knew it was time to get serious about the cabinets. From day one, I knew we would be using IKEA cabinets in the laundry room. For one, you can't beat the price, anywhere. And two, the look is clean and simple. And three, I was able to get my long, deep drawers which are by far a better choice for storage that shelves with doors, in my opinion. I knew the style, the design and that it all measured 24" deep. Standard depth, no other option.

Then I measured. And I measured again.

And I looked at the plans. And yes indeed, the cabinets were drawn at 18". Which means the door to the powder room was built to allow an 18" deep cabinet, not a 24" one.

So I stressed myself out, looked at other options, thought about just ordering something cheap from Home Depot that would still cost over $1500 and then I just ended up back where I had started: I wanted the IKEA cabinets.

Solution: make the door frame smaller to the powder room and order a new door.

And so we did. Actually John did. And I went shopping.

I came home with a crazy amount of boxes, all of which are not shown below, and knew that I had some solid hours of assembly ahead of me. I could have had John assemble them, but when you pay your contractor his hourly rate of $65 to assemble IKEA cabinets then your IKEA cabinets are not really that inexpensive anymore. And besides, I like the assembly part. I know a lot of people loath Ikea furniture for that reason. I'm a little strange. I get a huge amount of satisfaction when I have indeed completed the task.

My husband took care of the boys and I headed over to a dark and empty house with a flashlight and set of tools. The guys had left one of their work lights on for me and I found a good Pandora station and got to work.

At 7:35PM it looked like this:

At 9:05PM, it was all done:

And by the end of the next day, it looked like this:

PS Those are the floors tiles. I love them!

PSS The old laundry door is not wasted by the way nor a major cash loss. It's put aside and will be the door we use for the storage space in Phase 2. I like it when things turn out that way.

Trim tools

Trim tools are big. And need lots of space. Luckily, we had some of that.

And then there is the "throw everything else in it" room. High fixtures, vanities, hardware, oh my. It just keeps arriving and right now we have quite a stockpile.

A week from today, this room may just look totally different.

Waiting for the tapers to finish

Sheetrock is a mess. There is silica dust everywhere. And the tape and glue and white goopy stuff that they use to seal it all up is a mess. And because everything is a mess and the tapers are basically in every corner of every room, everything else is stopped or at least on hold. 

What is not on hold is making decisions. In comes my gratitude for our contractor and his organization and forward thinking. Last Monday, exactly a week ago knowing the delay with our taping crew, he gave me a list and said to have all of this ready by Monday March 30th. On the list: tile, cabinets, railings, confirm painter.

So last week, I ordered the shower wall tile on Tuesday, picked out and loaded the laundry cabinets from IKEA on Tuesday, realized the countertop we had chosen for the laundry doesn't work with the floor tile so added that decision back onto the to do list on Tuesday, looked at new options for countertops on Wednesday, approved the railing design on Wednesday, ordered the undercount laundry sink on Wednesday, verified the floor tile layout on Thursday, confirmed the painter on Friday, picked up the shower wall tile on Friday and then unloaded it all into the garage. Yup, that about covers it.

But today it's Monday, March 30th and I think we're still waiting for the tapers to finish and our new expedited, updated and exciting construction schedule is delayed by 2 days. Installing cabinets and shower pans and starting on interior trim will have to wait. 

New date to get this show on the road: Wednesday April 1st.

Stay tuned.

Tapers are here!

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. And that light started at 8am this morning when a gaggle of guys arrived with crazy looking Star Wars like stilts and wet goopy paste that is appearing like goose poop all over everything.

But they are here and they aren't 10 days delayed and they are taping it at all up! This is progress people!

Sheetrock Day One!

First came the pink stuff.

Then came 100+ sheets of heavy sheetrock that had to be carried up our stairs.

Then came the guys on stilts.

Seriously, this is crazy.

What is even crazier - we are starting to see exactly what this house is going to feel like.

Big triumphs!

It was big week.

Fire Inspection - Passed!

Close in Inspection - Passed!

Next up sheet rockers!

Here it goes!!!!

Small triumphs

We've had a time set back this week. And in the final stretch, that feels miserable.

So I am choosing instead to dwell on the development of yesterday. Which is that in the morning the exterior of our house looked like...

And when I can home at 4pm it looked like...

It's not going to be white but I LOVE it already! Really, I am almost giddy.

Perspective

I spent last weekend with two of my favorite women on the whole planet. We do this every year and have been since we graduated college. And inevitably, some little nugget of wisdom seeps through the laughter and spa treatments and parenting story telling. It's the little nugget that stays with me even days later as I toss and turn it around in my head.

It is basically this: Stressing over choosing Faucet A or Faucet B vs. figuring out how to pay for your child's college with your husband's divorce lawyer.

Well, that basically says it all.

I have posted before on how to keep perspective and not get caught up in the zany, stressful, taxing and often time sensitive and money draining world of construction. I don't know how to be chill and not take it seriously. You have to take it seriously so that you make smart decisions, prioritize the necessities and not squander your money. And let me tell you - do you know how easy it is to squander money on a construction project? Easy, so easy, too easy. You basically just have to open your mouth and you have already squandered $1000. Miscommunications, missed decisions, mistakes. Money, money, money.

And the money part is what makes it really hard for me to keep perspective. When it comes down to it, it's that plus a bit of twisted perfectionism that makes me not want to do anything wrong or make an mistakes or piss anyone off. So this is where my work must start - somewhere in all of this lies my inability to really truly keep my cool and trust that all is happening the way it is supposed to. And to not sweat the small stuff.

I warned you that this blog wasn't going to be just about nails, upholstery and 2x4's.