Tell Me the Stories Tuesday- Remodeling Woes

So the big bathroom reveal is almost here. Derek should be finishing today! YIPPEE! So I thought I would share with you some of the little problems that have showed up along the way. The first problem happened when Robert started the demo process on the floor. This is what he found around the toilet.

It turns out that the inlet valve to the toilet had been leaking for who knows how long. Now we knew why the linoleum was lifting. So he ended up staying up until about 1 in the morning ripping out the subfloor in addition to everything else.

We then decided we could save some money by refinishing the vanity instead of buying a new one. I thought a lot about how I wanted it to look and then remembered this hook board that I had bought for the bathroom whenever it was finally painted. I loved the colors on it so I decided to match the finishes to it. So I took the board to different paint stores hoping to match the color. Well apparently none of the computers could match it.

It is hard to tell from the picture, but the wood is a very dark brown (the color name is espresso) with some burgundy undertones. The stores kept thinking it was a black color. We finally ended up going with a high gloss black paint since that was the closest we could find.

So I then went and painted the vanity and medicine cabinet in the black. Then we went to go find a counter top and sink for the vanity. We found out that all the counter tops were either too big or too little, none fit! The day before Derek had joked about making a tile counter top and now we figured we would have him make it and we would buy only the sink. We started looking for a sink and none of them fit the hole in the counter top for the sink and the hole couldn't be enlarged since it was up against the side of the vanity already. We were then left with the option of buying a new vanity or a vessel sink. We went the cheap route and bought the vessel sink and had Derek tile the counter.When Derek put the medicine cabinet back in we found the next problem. It no longer fit! With new lights and the sink issue we had problems. The lights rested right on top of the medicine cabinet. So we ended up going with just a mirror and some great shelves Derek then had to build. (By the way in anyone needs a medicine cabinet we have one).

When Derek was going to replace the toilet, he was going to replace the inlet valve to make sure we no longer had any leaks, but he couldn't find the shut off for the cold water anywhere. We then called a plumber who had replaced our water heater and found out our cold water has to be shut off at the water main. Our valve ended up being fixed instead of being replace.

When we bought the faucet for the sink we worked with the sales clerk to make sure it would fit the vessel sink. When Derek went to install the sink we found a different problem with the faucet, the drain. Most sinks have an overflow so they have an overflow valve on the drain. Vessel sinks don't. So we tried to find a drain in the finish of our faucet and couldn't find one. We found that we would have to special order either the drain or a new faucet with a minimum cost of $80 for just the drain! I came home and decided to look online for an alternative. We ended up finding a drain and a faucet for about $60 cheaper than the faucet we bought in town. Score! They arrived, fit the sink, looked great, but the base didn't have a strong connection. Derek first tried to fix it with silicone and when that didn't work he was able to fix it with Gorilla Glue.

So it has been fun and crazy redoing the bathroom, but it looks great!