At the House on the Isthmus, lots of things have been repurposed or restored. My kitchen island used to be a dresser and I'm fairly certain its top used to be a table top of some sort. My coffee table - the first piece of furniture I ever restored simply because it was just like my parents' coffee table - used to be a chest. My dining room table was my great grandmother's and I bought the chairs off of Craigslist. The list goes on but I'm sure I'd spoil a surprise or two intended for later if I continued.
One piece that's maintained a fairly regular life cycle is our new upstairs bathroom's vanity.
Two years ago, it was a dresser. I refinished it before even buying Isthmus House, intending for it to become the downstairs bathroom vanity but the plumbing was going to be prohibitively expensive to move so it sat as the sideboard in the dining room for a little while.
Once it became painfully apparent that we didn't have enough counter space in the kitchen (about 7 square feet - The Roommate and I found ourselves using bar stools for extra counter space), it converted again; this time to a kitchen island in October 2013's Sometimes Things Change...
When it came time to plan for the upstairs bathroom, I was determined to use a freestanding vanity. Although I'd hoped to use a double vanity, there was logistically no way and eventually I hunted down another period correct dresser off Craigslist to become my vanity... and found that I couldn't talk myself into cutting into it.
After a bit of hemming and hawing, The Roommate and I took the original dresser - turned sideboard turned island - upstairs and dry fit it in the space where it was a perfect fit.
I thought about leaving a wood top on it and just putting a billion layers of marine sealant on it but ended up going with soapstone instead. Soapstone is a period correct option for counters in a 1910 home and it's wonderful for many reasons.
Because the front of the vanity is curved, I chose to take the wooden top off for the fabricators to use as a template. It was going to be a super tight squeeze to get in a faucet, sink and a back splash but we narrowly made it with my only 19-inch deep dresser turned vanity. The top is deeper than 19 inches but it's the inside of the vanity measurements that count.
For reference purposes, I had to have 24 inches in front of the toilet for code which left me with about 20 inches to the facing wall - aka the only space left for my vanity. A standard vanity is 21-22 inches but, since I didn't have that to give, we consolidated a bit. Choosing a smaller sink (only 12 inches) and a smaller three piece faucet - also period correct with chrome cross handles - gave me just enough area for the fabricator to worry less about having holes too close to each other which can lead to breaks in the stone.
Believe it or not, getting the top was the easy part - if easily most expensive at around $600 for a fabricated remnant.
We resumed with the dependencies from last week:
To rough in plumbing, the plumbers need to know where the drain will be. That means that you need to make a decision and stick with in. In this case, I chose dead center so that the stone fabricators could put the cuts dead center as well.
Because the plumbing was roughed in, I could determine where the holes in the back of the vanity needed to be to get it flush. To create the holes, mark where you need them and use a drill + bit + hole saw. Hint: do not saw into your plumbing and, as usual, wear protective gear. (No, I didn't cut into my plumbing.)
In the morning, my soapstone installers came and laid the top and installed the undermount sink (they threw in a Kohler sink for cheap cheap including install!). A few hours later, my plumber was back to connect the tub, place the toilet and connect my drain and water lines. 24 hours would have been better post-sink install but the installer and I had a little miscommunication and I lost about 24 of my 28 hour dry time I'd planned for when they couldn't make it.
To get each trade in and out easily, I'd pulled the drawers out of the vanity until I could cut them to get around the plumbing trap.
There are a lot of steps (although I think it went quite quickly) and I didn't take great pictures while I was modifying our lovely vanity so I found a very helpful tutorial replete with comprehensive pictures from our friends at HGTV to walk anyone through a conversion of their own.
After all of the drawers were cut, all of the plumbing installed and everything wiped down (because, so much drywall dust!), we had a vanity!
What do you think of this version? I think we'll keep it just like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment