The Bathroom (Part 3)
and the Basement
One of the most frustrating items was the bathroom medicine cabinet. I ordered one from Home Depot early on that had three mirrored doors and lots of shelf space. It might have worked, but the locations to install the brackets to hold it to the wall were not in the least bit flexible. Perhaps a more modern house could handle it with some heavy-duty wall anchors, but this is an old lathe and plaster home and it needed to go into a stud, as it was heavy. So back it went to Home Depot. Unfortunately it didn’t make it back in one piece (“Be sure to secure it in the back of the car!” I swear I recall saying…) but they took it back anyway, albeit for store credit since we’d ordered it months before we even opened the box.
Neal brought home one off the shelf, which seemed okay - it was white with one door with a bronze knob, mirror outside, two shelves inside. But it wasn’t the same white as the tile, so it looked a bit off. No problem; I’ll paint it. Armed with cardboard, a sunny day, a can of primer and a can of black paint, I went to work outside. Only problem was, nothing stuck to the surface. Not even the primer.
I don’t know what kind of chemically altered material this thing was made of, but it was not made to be painted. Try as I might, paint peeled and flaked off. During the spray painting, a little got on the mirror. Of course, that paint stuck. Neal tried to make it look better by applying black tape around the outside. Gave it a sort of steampunk bomb shelter look. Not exactly the look we are going for. I felt horrible, having ruined a perfectly mediocre cabinet. Neal thought it looked kind of cool but I think he was just trying to make me feel better. It’s still up, just because I’ve reached burn-out stage on trying to find a medicine cabinet that would work and not cost a ton of $$.
At least we have a mirror. Still not a full-length one, except for the one we took off the wall and store in the basement. Kind of afraid to see myself in one anyway…
At the condo, it also had come with a big mirror with no medicine cabinet over a sink area that is the size only condos and cheap apartments use. I had no idea how fortunate I’d been to find an Ikea cabinet with a nice wood trim that was in really decent shape at the ReStore. I had a handy-man friend install it, and it looked really nice! I loved storing all my makeup and some of my teeth care in it. These days all they have in that department are damaged goods, ones that are inset, or maybe I just don’t visit often enough.
I currently have bathroom supplies in four different parts of the house. Exchanging a cabinet for a pedestal sink has been an adjustment. It’s hard to reach into the cubby holes without knocking something else over. Once the drawers are installed that should solve some of the storage problem, and we have room to put shelves on one side of the sink. We could probably do something over the toilet as well. So much to do!
A few more things that need completion in the bathroom (other than a cabinet that I’m really happy with):
Since we moved the door to the outside, there is yet an area that was the frame that needs some trim.
We have towel bars but they’re not yet installed.
We have one hand-towel bar installed but it’s too low.
We have hardware to hang drawers in those cubby holes, but that’s not a high priority.
The tile on the floor needs to be scrubbed and sealed and shined.
Where the pipes come out of the wall for the toilet and the sink, needs a cover.
The heated floor needs hooking up to our electrical box.
Above shows prior to the cabinet install, the doorway, with the new drywall before it was mudded and painted, and a new location for the light switch. When we first moved here, the light switch for the bathroom was in the hallway. Not the most convenient; you had to light up the hallway if you wanted to turn on the bathroom light. With some ingenuity, fish tape, and patience we had ourselves the fan and the light switch next to each other.
Also in this picture is the light fixture that we ended up replacing, installing this one upstairs. We ordered a cute light from Amazon, and they sent us two! It didn’t come with bulbs, but I found some on sale at the hardware store. Some day we hope to install a bathroom in the attic, and will use it there. Perhaps along with that dang cabinet…
Enough on the bathroom. Will update once the above are complete!
One of the reasons we think the house didn’t sell quickly in a seller-friendly market was that the basement was soaking wet. We’d turned down a home because of this issue in another town, but it only had a crawl space, plus there was nowhere for the water to go given the local geography. This one looked fixable, and the basement was full-height.
The inspector noticed something that someone living in this house alone would never discover: There was a corner piece of plumbing that was missing, so the wastewater (greywater) would never make it to the city pipes. Water would run from the sink, hit that corner and fall into a sump pump, only to be pumped back into the same pipe for the cycle to repeat itself. That was reason #1 for some wetness. We hired our neighbor to fix it, and have not heard the sump pump run at all since!
The other end of the basement had broken concrete you could step on, and water would seep up all around! The walls were also a bit damp. Turns out, the down-spouts were not set up correctly, so water from the roof would go straight down to the wall and into the basement.
After fixing the roof drains, we only have dampness in a couple spots. Much improved!
One thing I noticed is that when we ran heat, the basement got quite warm… but the laundry room stayed cold, even though it had a heat vent.. that.. wait for it… was not hooked up! Nope, just like the missing piece of plumbing there was a missing piece of ducting.
To the hardware store we went to get some ducting, and it was such an easy fix! We even used duct tape, first time in my life I’d ever used that stuff for its original intended purpose.
Thanks to Craigslist, we are the proud owners of a (free) heavy-duty (>150 lbs?) ping-pong table! The lighting isn’t quite right to play yet… we tried replacing bulbs, those long tubular white ones, but they didn’t work so probably needs new fixtures. We got a net and balls at Big5, paddles at a second hand store. Can’t wait to actually play some table tennis!
We transported the table on top of the Element, which was a feat in and of itself. I have a Thule rack on the roof. I removed the roof bike rack which was just in the way, and the guys at the house we got it from helped us load. We tied it down with some straps and drove very carefully home, hitting one of the few rain breaks that day, and taking the route that lacked roundabouts. When unloading it, Neal used some wood to help lower it onto our makeshift pallet table. It gained enough momentum that the table went splat into a pile of wood… (there will be pics of the table in the upcoming post about trim.) Have to build another one! We were able to man-handle it through the laundry room and down the stairs. If we ever sell this place, it comes with the house!