7-1-17

Gary W. Graley

Gary W. Graley

“Imagination is more important than knowledge"
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Mar 2, 1999
Messages
27,419
Happy July first everyone, interesting date, to those that like numbers, 7117 , kind of like a Palindrome of the number/date world.

Finally in our new to us home, made back in the 1940's, more work to be done but that is always the way with a house, always something to tinker with, right now it's our bathroom FAR too small and a new sink/vanity is going to be install over the 4th of July holidays.

The year is moving so quickly! I can't believe it is already July!
G2
 
Yep, kinda hard to believe that half the year is already gone.

I understand your "tinkering" around the house.

About 4 months ago, my mother broke a bone her foot and was in a wheel chair for about 2 months until the doctor cleared her to wear a boot. She found out just how "not wheel chair friendly" her bathroom was.

I'm currently remodeling her master bath - removing the old vanity, putting in a 36" door in the wall between the master bedroom and bath, closing up the old door from the hall to the bathroom, adding another vanity w/ sink in the hall, pulling up the old stick down tile floor and underlayment, putting down cement board and ceramic tile. Built her a new vanity cabinet and drawers last Thursday. Not a fast process, but satisfying in the end when you finally put that last finishing touch on a project.
 
And happy tinkering to all on this July 1st :) as Canada is going up in fireworks to celebrate the 150th year of Confederation :D
 
Well, that sounds like a great plan there. I wish we had such things available but we are SO limited it isn't funny. The first three days here my wife was in tears wanting to hit the undo button and go back to our home of 34 years, mainly because of this very small bathroom.

To give you an idea, as you slide the door...yep it doesn't lock nor open normally it is a set of sliding doors like for a closet, on one side is a stacked washer and dryer, the other side is the entrance to the ONE and only bathroom....

SO, you walk in and there is a cabinet on the left, a nice walk in shower on the right, now the distance between that cabinet and the shower is only 21 1/2" wide !!! past that is a small sink that hangs off the wall, no vanity, the sink from the back to the front of the sink is only 12", shaving in the morning is ridiculous as you end up dripping water everywhere, behind you is the toilet, you can almost reach out to touch the sink from the toilet, ugh and double ugh. and the small area the toilet is in is about 29" wide, so that is pretty tight as well.

There isn't room to move either wall, so right now we're a bit stuck. We will install a small sink vanity cabinet that has the sink coming out past the cabinet, so we will have a bit more sink than before.

And we will install an in the wall cabinet above the sink and remove the other cabinet so that will give a little bit of elbow room between the shower and the wall.

It is so very tight in there, I would not eat a sandwich while in there, lest I gain too much and not be able to leave ;)

on the positive side, the walk in shower is quite nice, we just had a tub with a shower head before so this is much better and the water pressure is much higher so we do have some things we're thankful for, very few though...

G2

Edited to add, Congrats to our neighbors to the north, that is a great mile stone right there!
 
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Sounds like an opportunity to persevere in times of adversity, Gary.

Pocket doors are great when you don't want or need doors that swing and take up space. Our house here has 7 of them - 1 to a hall, 1 to a commode room, 1 to a bathroom and 4 to the bedrooms. The negative on pocket doors is that you can't hang pictures where the pocket is or the door gets all scratched up from the nail/screw you use to hand whatever.

Is there anyway y'all can add on a bigger bathroom? One of the upgrades we did to this old farm house was add a bathroom and convert the garage to 2 bedrooms. There was originally only 2 of each about 100 feet apart.
 
Unfortunately no room to expand, and no way to put in a pocket door either as there's one just along the wall from the bathroom into our bedroom
It's a tough situation.
It's a two bedroom house and the second bedroom is to the side of the bathroom, but to eat into that room would cut it down too much too.
G2
 
Congrats on the new place, Gary. All the best on the bathroom remodeling.

I have a new vanity/sink/faucet and flooring for our bathroom waiting for me to get started as well. The previous owners here got the place ready to sell by putting in the absolute cheapest peel-n-stick tile, cheap carpet and paint. I've been tackling it one project at a time and after three years, I'm still not close to finished. :p Closer to broke but, not close to finished.
 
Here's a shot from the realtor website for the house sale, of the bathroom as it was
Notice the large faucet and how the sink is at an angle, it literally was just hanging from a metal bracket on the wall.

IMG_0157.jpg~original


And today I put this one in along with a matching toilet paper holder

IMG_0158.jpg~original


Still pretty small but better than the one that was hanging on the wall

Also a new smaller faucet too

IMG_0159.jpg~original


A marked improvement
:)

G2
 
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Some before/during photos.


[--

As I suspected. The floor under the vanity was a mess.

[--


I have a little mud work on the walls where the old vanity was. It needs to dty over night before putting in the new sink.
I need to pick up some new base board tomorrow too. The old stuff was pretty beat up.

Enjoy your 4th, Gary.
 
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Nice! looks like a LOT of work had to be done to support the new stuff, but necessary too !

And the cabinet/sink we got from Valu picked it up there, brought it home, opened the box, the sink was stuck inside the cabinet and on it's trip from the orient, it proceeded to bust up the bottom of the cabinet !!! drove back and had them open the other two boxes, they were in WORSE shape ! so they said we could take their floor model if we want, it was a little dirty but not overly so and we were stuck so yeah, we took it, should have asked right then for a discount but you know how that goes. They had a white one they were going to open up to see if that was damaged too and send all of them back to the distributor, looks like they packed them upside down so that heavy ceramic sink was just banging away a the bottom plate as well as the sides of the cabinet, ugh.

Then, with the piping being different than the hanging one, I had to trim the drain pipes to fit, ended up with a leak at the bottom of the sink but got that handled now, removed the door so as to have full open access was key, remove the screws from the door itself and leave the hinges in the cabinet.

Also I knew there was some solid wall where the old sink was hanging from, so I took a lag bolt and a piece of metal to clamp the back of the ceramic sink to the wall, "GENTLY" so as not to fracture the ceramic but to make it so it would not want to pull forward if someone banged into it.

also ran some silicone along the top edges of the vanity and along the back of the sink as well so it would be more fixed to the vanity.

And the vanity cabinet came with two screws and plastic anchors to fasten it to the wall, but there is a gap between the wall and that strip of wood so I got some wedges from Home Depot to slide in and then when I screwed the cabinet to the wall it would not be putting untoward pressure to the sides of the cabinet where that wood is fastened. After seeing the damaged ones, I didn't want to risk tightening down and pulling or breaking that bit of wood, the wedges worked great and made a solid feel to how the cabinet was anchored to the wall.

All in all a very handy little sink vanity, not the most expensive but for our needs, " It will Wash " said in my best "Forged in Fire" voice :)
G2
 
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Nice finish, yours is a bit larger we wish we had the room for one like that
G2
 
You guys are so darn impressive that I wish you were neighbours ... helpful neighbours with time and willing hearts to help out with my dripping taps! Impressive is definitely the word. And I know my words :thumbsup:
 
taldesta said:
You guys are so darn impressive that I wish you were neighbours ... helpful neighbours with time and willing hearts to help out with my dripping taps! Impressive is definitely the word. And I know my words :thumbsup:
Click to expand...

As I tell everyone, If you can't afford to pay someone to do it, you have to learn to do it yourself. :p

Live long enough to do the same task over and over (water heater, plumbing, flooring, painting, etc.) you learn to do it right. This job only took three trips to the hardware store.

First trip was because I didn't get the replacement baseboard molding and needed to get subfloor materials to fix that mess under the old vanity.

I bought flex hoses that were an inch too short and needed to get paint because the old vanity was deeper and more of the wall was exposed with the new one.

Third trip - the sink is a little taller so I needed a drain pipe extention. :oops:

Yes, there were some expletives but, that's just me. I work better when I'm using the F-word.:D
 
So .... your sayin' if I curse sufficiently, my plumbing problems are solved. Thanks so much! I should ace this! :D
 
My dogs tell me I speak this tongue fluently already ... but they drink a lot :D
 
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