Bonfire of the Vanities

I should update you folks on my Terry-like adventures in home repair. Me & the Mrs. set out to rearrange our half bath downstairs a while back. Mrs. got some paint sample cards, taped them to the wall to see how they looked, and we kinda forgot about it. So last week she gets the bug again, and we decide to get underway.

Now, normal people, seeing a long weekend ahead, would have thought to go out Sunday AM, get the stuff we need, and spend the two days of President's weekend working on it (bear in mind, of course, that we lose Saturday as a day of work, it being the Day of Rest and all that.) Do we head out to Big Orange on Sunday AM? Sunday eve? Monday AM? Not us, no. We have to wait until Monday Afternoon, when the whole weekend is gone.

Be that as it may, we went & got paint and brushes and stuff and came home. Got the kids to bed, and started on the room. I took the tank off the toilet, and got working on the sink. Regular contractors would've bolted the pedestal sink into the wall, but not ours, oh no. He just slapped that mother full of Liquid Nails and squished it against the wall. Needless to say, no dopey putty knife was getting that thing off the wall, so we just yanked out an inch deep crater into the sheetrock.

Oh well, I've been meaning to learn to use the joint compound anyway. Drag out the little bucket that's been in the garage for four years, and whaddaya know? It's a cake of brick hard grey sludge. Next trip to big orange, but at least this time Mrs. made her choice on the vanity, so I picked that up too. (MUCH more on this later.) Back with the fresh stuff, a little joint tape & some fresh goo later, and it looks not bad for an amateur.

Next day Mrs. gets to work painting. The spackled bit wasn't really dry yet, but she did a lovely job painting the rest of the walls. She also took her own trip to the store to get new TP & towel holders. I get home, sand down the patch (I did a pretty decent job on the whole, though my tagline was "the vanity will cover that bit.) I also yanked out a piece of molding from the back so the vanity would fit flush to the wall. I gouged quite a bit, but see above tagline. Paint over that stuff, and call it a day.

By the end of Wednesday eve, we had painted on the second coat, and Mrs. had gone & gotten a sink she liked. We're all set to load in the lovely vanity, and guess what? The fershullgener thing has a drawer support right where the shut off valve is. There's no real way we can get around the problem (remember this was supposed to save us money on a contractor), so guess where I'm going? You betcha. Vanity back in the car, me back to big orange, and let's refund this bad boy. No, of COURSE they don't make the no-drawer vanity in maple, why should they?

So Mrs. goes to the competing humongo warehouse place on Friday, picks up the other vanity she had seen & liked, and shleps it home. Also a trip to Targêt to get bathroom rugs to go with the new plan - five, I think, with plans to return four. (That becomes ironic, as opposed to ha ha, funny later). She calls me from home to say "well, there's a spot near where the handle goes that someone obviously colored over with marker, and the doors don't align, but if you can fix that I guess we can keep it." I get home, friddle with the doors, then see the huge crack she hadn't noticed on one side, and NOW where do you think we're going?

We had guests coming for shabbos, which is why Mrs. hoped to have this finished before, but no dice. Pack all the crap into the non-functioning restroom (though I got the throne back in order earlier, we decided to shut the whole thing down.) So yesterday we head to a different big orange to check out MORE vanities. They had something we kind of like on display, but it's the last one and it's cracked. They do, however, have it in cherry (we've already been through maple & cinnamon, which would be delicious in french toast, but not so much fun here.)

Naturally the cherry are all on the tippy top shelf, and they need a forklift. We've at least found the one guy in the whole place who knew anything, evidenced by everyone else in the place interrupting him to ask for stuff. So they shut down not just the aisle we're in, but the next one over, too. All this just so we can look at the stupid thing. Both me & Mrs. are wondering how mad he'll be if it turns out we don't want it. He gets it down, opens the box, she likes, we see a scratch, he opens a 2nd, we don't notice the inside scratch until later, so we take it. Off to other warehouse to return the piece of junk, and home.

We don't love the sink, which is white instead of offwhite, none of the rugs really match, and we haven't put the stupid thing in yet, but for the moment we seem to have settled on the final answer. It's always an adventure. (BTW, I left out like seven other trips to the store for the bits & pieces we forgot. Oy.)