DIY bathroom remodel: the boy helps install the vanity

The Boy decided to chew the paper on some exposed drywall, so we had to rip it off and now I have to mud it and sand it again.

Then while I was screwing in the drawer glides, he started rolling around in sawdust and got some on his head. Then he started playing soccer with a piece of drywall and was about to eat it when I chased him out of the room.

Then the little jerkball knocked over a drawer I was working on! When I set the drawer down again he decided to sit in it and wouldn’t get out when I told him to.

And then when the vanity was finally done and I went to take a picture, he ended up in the photo with his little tail sticking out of the shower curtain. That little rascal!

I gave him the customary punishment: I pick him up and shake him a little, then I do “Swing the Cat,” wherein I hold him under the armpits and swing him around a little and laugh at the stupid way his legs just dangle, and sing a little song that goes “Swing the cat, swing the cat, it’s time to swing the cat.” Then I give him a little noogie and strangle him and then I give him a little potch on the tuchus and send him on his way. 

It’s hard to stay mad at him after he lets me do all that stuff. 

DIY bathroom remodel: actually installing the vanity!

Someone at work asked me today, “No, but seriously, why isthis bathroom project taking you so long?”

How can I answer that question without boring them to tears with the details? Oh, the details! Whoever invented the phrase “The Devil is in the details” should get a cookie; I’ve never really identified with that phrase, but now it makes complete sense. Oy vey, the million and one tiny little problems and follow-ups that make a “simple one-day project” turn into a four-day mess! After the saga of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, on Monday we were finally ready to attach the vanity to the walls!

First we had to cut out a hole for where the sink pipes will go. We used a little battery-operated mini-SawzAll that my neighbor had loaned us. The battery runs out after about five minutes, so it was a race against time to get all four sides of our hole cut out—or else we’d have to use a hand-saw (ugh! hate the hand-saw!).

Then we knocked on our neighbors’ door to ask them if they could help us lift it. We were worried it was too heavy for us, and that we would either snap off the legs if we tried to do it ourselves, or that the pieces would come apart again like they had on Saturday.

Our neighbor was extremely kind to come help us lift it up, all of which took about five seconds. Then began the hard work: drilling all the pilot holes into the cleats, and driving screws in. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong, because the drill doesn’t really fit into the smaller drawer modules. What hubs had to do was put the drill bit really far into the drill (because it stuck out too far to get the drill inside the drawer), do a little bit of drilling, then when he had more room, pull the drill bit a little further out and finish the job. Repeat for the screws.

Oh, and did I mention the cleats are 2x4’s, so they’re extremely sturdy (good!) and difficult to drill/screw into? (Bad!) We were nigh on bed-time and we had only drilled the pilot holes. We were afraid to leave the whole thing sitting, un-secured to the wall, overnight, lest the modules should break apart again (we were very paranoid). So we sunk a couple screws in the back, then noticed the side was totally not even touching the side cleat anymore. The wall wasn’t plumb because our mudding was so thick in the corners. So even though the corner of the vanity was up against the cleat nicely, the face-frame end of things was jutting about a centimeter away from the cleat.

We decided to go ahead and just screw in the face-frame end of things and see what happens. Fortunately, the cabinet “sat down” and touched the cleat. However, in the back of my mind there’s a nagging little voice that says, “There’s a lot of pressure being applied in opposing directions here, and someday your vanity is going to snap into two pieces.”

I spend a lot of time these days gagging that little voice and shoving it into a  closet. 

DIY bathroom remodel: installing the vanity

The vanity! First things first, we realized we had installed too many pieces of wainscoting, so we delicately removed three pieces—as delicately as you can remove something that has 5 nails going into the wall.

Then we installed the cleats into which the vanity will be screwed. One along the top, one near the bottom, on both the back and side walls. 

Last Friday evening, we hurriedly ate dinner, went to get my sister’s truck, went home to get the vanity, and drove over to my dad’s house—and showed up an hour late. Sorry, dad! Then we inserted metal glides into our four stained vanity legs, using his fancy-schmancy drill press. Then we attached the vanity legs onto the vanity. This all took quite a bit of time, amazingly. I can’t really explain why or how these projects suck up so many hours, but they do. That’s the reality, and I’m slowly learning to accept it.

Then we all got tired and dumb because it was late at night. So we made plans to come back the next morning.

The next morning, my dad called to delay, because his water heater had gone out that morning! (Amazingly, he still set aside five hours that day to work with us, despite needing to do his own home project, installing the water heater. You’re the best, Pops.) We spent a few hours attaching the three vanity modules to each other. We put shims between the modules, and then screwed three screws in through each shim. We decided not to shim the back sides, figuring the whole thing would be secure enough without doing that step.

At 3:00, when hubby and I needed to leave to make a dentist appointment, and when my dad needed to get ready for house-guests to come over, we ended right on time. We went to lift the vanity into the truck, and—poof! The modules fell apart!

In my younger days (four weeks ago at the beginning of this project), I would have blown a gasket right about then. However, the older, wiser me simply went like this, in unison with my dad:

“Oh.”

Then, while my husband put his hands on his head and said, “That just happened,” my dad instantly went into problem-solving mode. This is how my dad problem-solves: “Okay! What you’re gonna do is, you’re gonna back those three screws out. Then, you’re gonna drive in three more screws going the opposite direction…then all you gotta do is sink the original three back in. So, you’ll have six screws, facing each other. No problem.”

My husband was still standing there with his hands on his head, asking, “Do we come back tomorrow to finish this?” My dad wasn’t available tomorrow. I could see my husband starting to despair, so I took charge. “Okay! What we’re gonna do is, we’re gonna back those screws out. Then we’re gonna put the three separate modules in the truck, and take them home. Then we’re gonna put the vanity back together in our own bathroom. No problem.” We didn’t need my dad’s fancy tools anymore, all we needed for the rest of the job were a drill and screwdriver.

Despite the setback, it solved one problem we hadn’t yet figured out: how would we have gotten the whole vanity back into our bathroom anyway? It was pretty heavy as three separate pieces; attached it was going to be too much for us to get down our stairs—at least by ourselves, and no one was around to help us.

On Sunday, we brought the three modules in, and slowly but surely re-attached them to each other. We also decided to add the shims we had originally planned to put in the back, to stabilize everything. We couldn’t over-do the stabilization after what had happened! We also decided to follow the directions that had come with the vanity (which we had previously thought we could ignore), that said to sink a screw in between each module through the face-frame. Dangerous if we aimed incorrectly (screws coming out the front!), but we were careful and we avoided mishaps.

Now how does all that take an entire day? Well, when the drawer modules are too small to fit your electric drill/screwdriver, that’s how. Hubs had to do a lot of hand-screwing, often at weird angles with drawer glides scraping his knuckles. We figured out, on average, we spent a half-hour per screw! Ridiculous.

But we got it all put together! After three days, we didn’t have much to show for our work, but we’re learning that’s the way it can go. Serenity now, Jerry! Serenity now! 

DIY bathroom remodel: mudding the drywall—again

Here’s the work I did while hubs was in class one evening: taping the mudding the drywall where we had to rip it out to move the electrical boxes up.

I’ve learned something about how to motivate myself on these projects—because when you get home from a long day at work, you don’t really feel excited to do yet another home project. What I do is the same thing I do when I’m psyching myself up for a sewing project: I imagine the finished product. When I imagined the wall, beautiful, smooth, painted, ready for light-switch trims, I found the strength to spend my evening working instead of watching TV (or blogging). 

DIY bathroom remodel: painting the niches

The niches are painted! We went back and forth on whether to paint them the same color as the walls, resulting in a camouflaged, more subtle look—or whether to paint them brown, resulting in a contrasting, bolder look. Hubby generally gives in when it comes to color choices, so we went with my brown look. It’s hard to say whether I totally like it, without the white trim that will complete the niches. I think they’re good. Not great, yet. 

DIY bathroom remodel: drywall tragedy

An author named Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch once said when you’re writing, you have to “murder your darlings“—in other words, revise and edit out even parts you love. That’s how I felt about this particular hitch in the project. 

We realized our panel of outlets and light switches was too low—the counter was going to be right underneath it, and the trim right above it. Either we would have to cut the trim around the electrical boxes (ugly! and inconvenient), or we would have to move the electrical boxes up (really inconvenient). 

In order to do that, we would have to rip out the drywall. Again. The very piece of drywall that caused me to have a mental breakdown on The Day of Tantrums. The very piece my husband wisely replaced while I was out running an errand, knowing I couldn’t stand to do it myself again. And now we’re doing it again. Again.

Other things we’ll have to do again: call the electrician to come move the boxes and re-wire; put insulation in; re-install drywall; tape and mud drywall; sand; mud; sand; prime; paint; paint coat 2.

My hubby was good enough to do the actual cutting. I couldn’t take a knife to it. However, once the boxes had been moved by our awesome electrician, I patched the drywall myself, and am currently in the process of sanding/mudding/sanding/mudding etc.

Icing on the cake: we’ve had large pieces of drywall sitting outside our front door for weeks, with no one from CraigsList giving a hoot. The day we were going to replace the drywall with a new scrap, someone came and took the big pieces! Ha ha! Another trip to the hardware store. We’re getting used to it. Three things I’m getting better at with this project (other than mudding and sanding) are: resignation, acceptance, and surrender. 

DIY bathroom remodel: working out the vanity with my pops

My dad came over on the weekend to help us work out our vanity. Things we needed to figure out:

1. How to attach the legs (purchased separately online, because the cabinet makers were going to charge $99 per leg) securely, so that they won’t snap off or rip the bottom of the vanity.
Attach them with brackets on the inside of the vanity—in other words, screws into bracket, through vanity bottom, into leg. My dad suggested putting metal glides on the bottom of the legs, to elevate them in case of water on the floor, and to adjust them as needed to level the vanity when it’s almost installed.

2. How to attach the side and back filler pieces that space the vanity 1 1/2 inches from the walls (because our door trim would block the drawers if we didn’t). We have, like, zero tools, so we needed to see if my dad had the right tools for cutting a piece of long wood.
My dad has a band-saw! Problem solved.

3. How to attach the three modules of the vanity to each other, so that they won’t break apart, cave in in the middle (because the four legs are only being attached to the two outer modules), or collapse under the weight of the countertop.
We decided to put a shim between each module (the face-frame allows for this because it covers up about a half-inch space between the modules), then screw through the shim into the other module. We will do this at the front and back, top and bottom so that each module has four shims.

4. How to attach the entire thing to the walls, so that most of the weight is supported by the walls, not the legs—because we don’t expect them to support the weight of the countertop. 
My dad said to put in “cleats,” which are 2x4’s screwed into the studs, going horizontally along the wall, into which we will screw the vanity.

Next is the prep work: staining the legs, priming the cleats (you can never be too careful about moisture!), working out a time we can take the whole vanity over to my dad’s, and borrowing my sister’s truck to transport it there. 

Thanks, Pops, for helping us!