Vanity for Powder Room

This project was the impetus for this blog -- I just finished it, and I wanted a place to document it and the other projects I've done. Then I figured it would be a nice place to put view photos, too. :-)

The downstairs powder room in my house had a rather plain bare sink, where you could see the pipes beneath it. I had fitted it with a fun faucet where you can see the water coming out of a chute before it drops into the sink, but I still wanted to replace the whole assembly with something more elegant. I looked into pre-built vanities, but the space is quite narrow -- only about 16 inches deep between the wall and the door. There were no pre-built vanities that fit the bill for me.

I started this project in February 2013 and finished in August 2013.

Before. This is actually a pic from a refi home inspection. 

Another "before" pic. 

I wanted the top to be marble (I've always loved marble). The cabinet front was going to be from the same plywood sheet with the same finish as the niche shelves, so I brought one along to select a marble piece that looked good with it. I had the marble custom cut to fit the space, with holes for the sink I had selected and the faucet.

Designs. I photographed them just in case I lost the papers. Even though I planned carefully, there were plenty of mistakes in the planning and the plans were altered several times.

Pieces for the face frame. I glued them together with the help of biscuits and a biscuit joiner.

mock-up of the cabinet door and drawers on top of the face frame.

All glued up! Unfortunately, the bits between the drawers are crooked, which will cause problems when I'm trying to fit the drawers so that they're both evenly spaced and don't scrape the frame when sliding.

Face frame with the base, and two upright pieces which will hold the drawer slides (and support the marble top). The base and the drawer support that faces the cabinet are 3/4" MDF, the other drawer support is just some old plywood I had in the garage (none of it shows anywhere). 

I had ordered the sink, and had the marble cut to fit. The square opening you can see below the paper is the hole for the  (vessel) sink drain, and the circle is for the faucet. That notch in the lower right is for the molding on the door jamb. A crisis arose when the website from which I had ordered the sink kept sending me emails pushing back the delivery date -- and I found out the sink was backordered and wasn't available anywhere for love or money for at least six months. Crap, what was I going to do about the already-cut marble? I looked for other sinks, but couldn't find any I liked nearly as much as the original. I used paper to see what the spacing would look like on the marble top.

I finally settled on a cylindrical sink. I figured I'd get a new hole drilled for a faucet, and I could use that other hole for a soap dispenser or something. The sink came, and I didn't like it -- it seemed to weighty for the space. I didn't really know what do to, but I punted on the sink decision. The good news is, I took so long to finish the project that my original sink was back in stock by the time I needed it! Huzzah!

Gluing together the drawers. The front is the 3/4 inch vertical grain douglas fir plywood, the sides are 1/2" MDF, and the bottoms are 1/8" plywood. My new router table was great for making interlocking corners and a groove for the drawer bottom.

The bottom and face frame (already stained and finished) mocked up. 

Gluing the bottom to the face frame.

Gluing the cabinet side / drawer support. I had to cut out a piece to accommodate the hot water valve which ended up directly behind it.

"Assembling" with the drawers to mark where the slides should go. I did not do a great job with the slides. Maybe there's an easier way to do it, but you can't trace the drawer slides onto the side because the drawer is in the way. I marked the ends of the slide and used a level to place the receiving parts on the cabinet. This did not work very well, and I ended up re-placing most of the receiving parts multiple times. Kind of a mess.

The base is in place, and screwed to the studs! I put facing on the kickplate, but no one's ever going to see it except kids crawling around on the floor. I just glued the facing to the base. 

The sink is gone! It is the only thing I've ever put on the sidewalk with a "free" sign that's taken more than a couple hours to disappear. I guess it's not something you'd pick up on a whim. ;-) I put an ad up on craigslist, and it was gone by the next day. 

Well, crap. The base and face frame fit great when you put the base in first and then put the face frame in front, but once they're glued together, they don't fit anymore (the front is a bit narrower than the rest because of the door jamb molding, and that just buggers everything). I tried all I could think of (even scraped some paint off the wall -- see lower left) but I couldn't get that assembled sucker in. Finally, I just sawed off an inch or so of the base on the left with a jigsaw so I could slide it in directly. 

Okay it's in! If missing an inch on the left. ;-)

More assembly, this time the plywood piece to hold the drawer receiving parts on the right.

In with drawers! And the sad little strip of MDF on the base replaced on the left. The base is screwed to the "foundation" in several places. 

Supports for the marble top made from 1x2 pine scrap from my bookcase project.

Well, crap, again. The marble was cut too big for the space. (They warned me that it would be much better if they came and measured and cut the marble to fit, but I didn't want to pay for that service. I probably should have.)

I ended up cutting a hole in the drywall and putting the excess marble in there. Problem solved! Except that the back wall was not straight but curved, so that there was a roughly 1/4 gap between the marble and the wall in the center, even though it met the wall at the corners. I *really* should have let the marble cutters come and measure and put it in on site. Oh, and here's the sink! Worth all the months of uncertainty as to whether I'd be able to get it.

I got some marble tiles from Home Depot for a backsplash to make the vanity look more finished and to hide the imperfect wall in the back. By some miracle, the tiles fit PERFECTLY on the right side and were short by an easily-hidden 1/4" in the back. The left side, I needed to cut a tile. I got a special blade for my jigsaw, but it was rough going, and if I had to do it again, I'd pay a tile shop to cut it for me.

Almost done! The mirror from IKEA turned out to be a bit too small for the wall, but the workaround for that turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the new bathroom (shown in a few pics). I had trouble finding knobs that fit the overall scheme... I got these conical ones, which I liked but didn't seem to blend with the other shapes in the bathroom.

The towel holder (and toilet roll holder, below) have the same square/curved shape as the sink and the faucet.

Aha! Square / curved knobs on display at Orchard Supply Hardware! None in stock, even on the web site, but I was able to find them elsewhere online. 

I hung little succulents to fill the wall space beneath the mirror. I am absurdly fond of them. The "planters" are tea light holders from CB2 with pebbles in the bottom for drainage.

New view from the doorway

I bought longer hoses and attached the faucet myself, but I ended up paying a plumber to redo the sink drainpipe. I watched her and asked questions, and I think I could do it myself next time. I covered the bottom of the cabinet with paper to hide the sliver of MDF on the left side, and the screws anchoring the cabinet to the foundation. I painted watered-down glue over the paper, which is probably dubious for water-proofing purposes. We'll see what happens if there's ever a plumbing failure...

The new faucet keeps the most distinctive feature of the old bathroom: watching the water run down the faucet chute before it spills off.

The finished vanity complete with wall-mounted soap dispenser.

And from the other side. :-) 

Shelves for Fireplace Niches

There were these niches on either side of my fireplace that were pretty much going unused. I suppose they're really for fireplace tools, but I rarely have fires, and when I do, they're usually Duraflame, which don't really require a poker. ;-) I wanted to put shelves up in the niches. At the same time, I got rid of my heavy tub chairs, which took up too much visual space for the small area, and replace them with lighter wooden lounge chairs. February, 2013.

Trying to figure out the spacing for the shelves with cardboard mock-ups. The tub chairs have been shunted off to the side. I also got rid of the tables -- just too crowded in the small space. 

I liked the idea of staggering the shelves and making them shorter than the whole width, so they'd appear to be floating.

Is three too many? How about two? No, in the end, three looked better.

Shelves in place! They're cut from vertical grain dogulas fir plywood, which is the same as the cabinets in my kitchen and upstairs bathroom. I chamfered the underside edges with a router, also similar to the cabinet doors.

trying some books... A nice advantage to the incomplete shelves is that they can accommodate taller books.

Even my really really tall National Geographic atlas.

The unabridged dictionary looks great there, as does a picture frame I bought on sale a long time ago and had been just sitting in a closet. Sadly, the dictionary doesn't get used much now that I have an iPhone.

Finished product, all stained and polyacrylic'd.

The mounting hardware. I chiseled out the space behind the keyholes by hand, since I was using mostly drywall anchors that had rounded-head screws. Plus, the wall angles turned out to be wider than 90 degrees, so a bit of slop was necessary to make sure all the screws could meet their keyhole.

A view of the screws that hold up the shelves. Either the screws are in a stud, or there's a 70-lb drywall anchor behind them.

The finished room! 

View Pics from 2013 to Date

Not that I'm asking you to date my pics. I'm sure you can get your own dates.

January 13. Starting to experiment with night photography this year. Still haven't really gotten it right. 

January 15

January 17

Also January 17. You can see that same cloud formation between the bridge towers.

January 18. The colors are more subtle here....

...and deeper here (also January 18). I like the reflection off the bay.

They say it's never the same sunset twice, but this one from January 19 looks a lot like the night before, doesn't it?

January 20

January 24

February 7. Always nice to have some clouds to break the sunset monotony. ;-)

February 11. Richmond / San Rafael Bridge. That's San Quentin to the left at the other end of the bridge. My dad thought it would be nice to have a San Quentin pic along with the Alcatraz ones, but it's really too far away for a good shot.

February 18. Spotlight on the bay!

February 28. Nice detail in the cloud formations.

March 10. Fog rolling in at sunset.

Later in the sunset on March 10. Love the cloud formation over Mt. Tam.

March 11

Also March 11. More attempts at night photography. I have a feeling this could have been really spectacular with the different colored lights illuminating the fog, but I haven't figured out how to photograph it yet. 

March 14. I like the dark patch of clouds in the middle left.

March 24

March 25. More subtle than most of the sunset pics, but I like the colors in this one a lot.

March 29

April 8. Mt Tam just seems to attract (create?) lovely cloud formations.

April 18. The shots with both the moon and the lights in the foreground were a bust, but this is a pretty nice one of just the moon with my telephoto lens. Can't figure out how best to place the moon within the cropped shot. Maybe centered would be best?

May 20

May 23. Conjunction of three planets: Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury.

May 25. Same conjunction a few days later. Mercury is really faint.

June 4

July 15. This is the hill in Richmond where the refineries are --- looks much better backlit. ;-) 

July 23. I love this shot -- great fog formations coincided with great lighting.

July 27. Kite festival in Cesar Chavez Park. Not a photo you'd want to frame and put on your wall or anything, but still of interest.

August 16. Love the wisps of fog in front of Angel Island.

Later on August 16.

August 25. Remarkable clouds that are just a sliver above the mountaintops.

August 29. You can see light glinting off the cars on the bridge.

Also August 29. The northern part of San Francisco visible to Plum Hill usually isn't terribly photogenic, but the light was really nice on this evening.

September 1

September 8

Also September 8. You can see the bridge lights in the distance through the fog. Still not great night photography, I'm afraid.

September 20. Another one where I like the subtle colors. You can see a ship coming in behind the bridge, just to the right of the south tower.