#29 - April Showers are Ready For Tile

I'm finding it really hard to believe that I've left this blog hanging since February.  I mean, I knew it was happening. I knew it was getting neglected and a little dusty (see also: my house), but that it hasn't been updated since February took me by surprise.  We're in the phase where daily changes are more subtle than drastic.  Or we'll have a drastic change, but then we'll have a full schedule for 18 days straight and my mental capacity for writing intelligible words falls by the wayside when my whole life priority is trying to make sure everyone has food and clean underwear.

Testing out the mirror, it's still waiting to be permanently hung

(Have I ever mentioned my life motto?  On here, I mean.  I know I've mentioned it because it comes out of my mouth pretty regularly like a 99 year old with a good, overused saying. It goes like this: "We're lucky we have clean underwear, everything else is just a bonus." It's true.)

Nope!

Also, it keeps snowing. I'm looking out my window right now, and there's snow falling.  I just washed all the winter coats on Friday when it was 82 degrees.  And then we had to wear them all again. 
















Over the past several weeks, most of the work has gone into the master bathroom and the laundry room.  We're trying to get the tiling finished so we can be finished with that mess and clean up the bedroom and family room so they're ready for floors.  We're finished with the floor tiling and only have the shower left to do!

Master Bath

 

Master Bath

Laundry

 

Laundry

In the master bathroom, we installed the floor tile and absolutely LOVE how it turned out.  The grout dried much lighter than we were hoping.  It wasn't supposed to be an exact match.  We were hoping for a little contrast.  But that's minor The vanity on the other hand -- holy crimany!  That was MAJOR   What a headache!  The vanity cabinet, itself, is just fine.  It's perfect and I love the warmth it adds to the room.  The top, however, what a nightmare!  Here's the sentence fragment bullet points of how it went down:

• shopped for vanity in-store and online at Lowe's, Home Depot, Menards.  
• not many options in-store to choose from so ordered one Site-to-Store from Home Depot's website.
• Took the kids with me to pick up vanity top.
• Forgot my van was jam packed with lots of stuff (van=wasteland)
• Rearranged the kids and the junk, crammed them all into the middle row, flipped down the seats in the backrow
• Two HD employees loaded giant vanity top box into van
• asked me if I had a bungee
• Uh, no...I have a box of baby clothes, some white cheddar popcorn, about 75 books, and extra uninstalled middle row van seat and a literal ton of trash, but no bungee cord.  But maybe we can tie together all of these tiny pieces of paper and make a nice rope out of them? 
• he found a rope and tied the hatch shut
• took the vanity top home
• Matt and I hauled into house later. box said 93 lbs and the box was bulky!
• Opened the box.
• The white / grey (fake) marble top was CREAM, PURPLE and PINK.

"Uh, Matt, I think it's pink.  Is that pink?  Is it purple?  It's purple-pink...and cream!  That's not white, is it?  It's purple."
"Um. It looks pink.  Let's turn the light off and see...well, in different lighting it looks white and grey."
"Ok, yeah.  I think it'll be fine.  It must just be the light bulbs we have in here (family room) Yeah, that looks white and grey.  I think it'll be ok."

We tried to convince ourselves, in the midst of second-guessing that it was actually white with grey/black/maybe bluish veining.  We also have florescent bulbs installed right now, but those aren't the permanent ones, so we factored that in and though maybe the lighting was tricking us.  We also absolutely positively did not want to haul that thing back to the store.

So, we then spent the better part of that evening lifting the heavy vanity top onto the tile saw and trimming a half inch off of each side.  We needed a 60.5" top, and all tops for 60" vanity cabinets are an actual measure of 61" even though sometimes they're called 60" vanity top.  I had asked about a special-order 60.5" counter top and that would've started at $1000 for just a basic top. Nope.  Not for me.  Once we finished trimming the purple top (with actual magenta flecks on it!), we took it into the bathroom to see how it would look, and it looked fine.  Not amazing. But fine, good enough, whatever.  We had a severe case of denial and did not want to take it back to the store.

Next, we had to trim down the coordinating back splash that came with it.  Well, surprise, surprise, the back splash was also not white and grey marble. But it wasn't cream and purple/pink either! It was yellowy-tan with brown veining, (but not many veins) and some discoloration from where it had been packaged.  Along with the vanity top problems, we realized the drywall work in the vanity alcove is not square. The wall curves backward.  So the backsplash doesn't touch the wall all the way across and the gap is too big for caulk to fix.

In our minds: the weird colored top was "fine," we didn't want to haul it back to the store, plus it was already cut.  Even if the back splash matched we couldn't have used it anyway because of the drywall.  So, we decided to skip the matching backsplash and do a tile back splash instead.

I spent some time over the next few days trying to find a nice tile that would match the vanity top, and there was nothing.  Every single tile I brought home made it look more purple and pink than it already was.  We finally found one out of 20-30 options that looked fine.  But, it wasn't even a tile I would have chosen. The only reason it made the final cut was because it matched the off-colored-stupid-vanity-top that was only "fine." And didn't make it look purple.  So, here we were, making choices based on the odd-colored top that we didn't really like, but that we had already cut and really didn't want to hassle with hauling back to the store.

I had decided I would try one more day to find some better back splash tile.  Meanwhile, I was inside wrapping up dinner and homework with the kids and Matt was working in the bathroom on installing the drains.

And then ... the final straw of the vanity saga.  One of the drain holes was bored diagonally, so when Matt inserted the drain, it would not sit correctly on the drain hole. He started to grind the drain hole so it would be straight, but ultimately we decided that the whole top was too high-maintenance, not worth the money we spent on it and most definitely not worth keeping.  It was purple, not white.  The back splash didn't match (not that we would use it anyway but that's still a strike against it), and the drain hole was crooked.  We had wasted too much precious time on that stupid top over the course of a few evenings! 

So I immediately called customer service.  I told them the whole saga and insisted that it was such a frustrating product that we didn't even want to make the effort to load it up and get it back to the store. I wanted them to come pick it up, didn't want to deal with it any more, but we had thrown away the packaging.  She assured me that if we just set it outside, UPS would come with a label and take it (far, far) away from us as long as I put a sign on it that said "For UPS pick-up."

So we put it outside.  In the rain. For a full day.

UPS came when we weren't home, walked past the vanity top in the driveway, and left a "failed attempt at pick up" notice on our door.

I called Home Depot customer service again, and she told me that UPS wouldn't actually take products without packaging.  Our options were to make our own box (say what?) or take it back to the store ourselves.  Isn't it always such a pleasure to get conflicting answers from company's customer service numbers? So, we came full circle!  We had to take it back to the store anyway and should've just done so in the first place!

My camera is on the fritz, so it's hard to see true colors, but you can see here what the real grey/white/black marble backsplash looks like compared to this top.

The yellowish back splash & the purplish top

MORAL OF THE STORY: We should have just taken it back to the store the instant we saw it looked purple!  Instead, we tried to force it to work.  Never try to keep making decisions off of a product that you know in your gut is not right. Just return it before you start spiraling toward making one bad decision after another!  Lugging it back to the store right away would've been a lot simpler than the headache we ended up going through in the long run.

The in-store return process was smooth.  My mom and I were able to load it into the van ourselves.  Without the box it was simple to load (this time I had to move not one, but two, kiddie pools out of the way. van=wasteland!)  I did apologize for returning a wet item, covered in maple buds, explained that it had been sitting out all day/night for UPS and they never came and I don't usually bring back dirty items, but I'm was not about to put one more ounce of energy into that ridiculous piece of purple fake marble.  She laughed and said she's seen much worse, and then processed the return.

Later that day, Matt & I went to Lowe's where they sell 60" vanities right off the shelf (home depot doesn't have them in stock at the store.)  We needed to have one in hand asap, so ordering online was not an option.  (Sometimes...I love not having too many options. Options are overwhelming!) They had one white vanity top left in stock.  It's not plain white, it has a little sparkle and texture to it, and it is so much better than the other one. I don't know how I missed it the first time around. It's fresh and crisp, while the other one just felt heavy and cranky and cantankerous.

We were able to trim the half inch off that white one and Matt installed it pretty quickly. We still plan to install a tile back splash instead of the one that came with the vanity top due to the curve in the drywall.

Matt has also installed the toilet & shower niches.  So, all that's left in this room is to tile the shower and install the faucets, mirror and towel bars!

The shower niches

The shower floor tile

The laundry room is pretty self-explanatory. The tile is installed and Matt put in the utility sink yesterday. During the building process, there was a mix-up on the location of the drain for a utility sink, so we didn't end up with it in its original location.  Therefore, the spacing wasn't ideal for a typical utility sink, so we had to find something with a depth of no more than 16 inches.  We found and almost purchased a really fab enameled cast iron sink on Craigslist for a smoking hot deal, but thankfully (sadly!) realized it wouldn't have fit with it's 18" depth.  We also searched for a basic plastic utility tub, but couldn't find one shallow enough.  We went with this stainless steel prep sink. Since it's plumbed for a regular utility sink, the drain pipe ended up being a little longer than necessary, but that's no biggie!  Beside the sink, we left a small gap to give us the option to hang an ironing board, a mop, broom, etc.

The upstairs bathroom has a toilet and is ready for towel bars and a shower curtain! (I cannot get a decent picture in here since there's no natural light.) 

 

These last details are definitely what takes the longest.  It seems to drag out sometimes, but we just keep plugging away.  Matt obviously does a lot of the work, and I assist whenever I can.  Most things right now are a one-man job though, so I just make sure I keep his belly full and the coffee hot.  He's a superstar in my eyes!  He even takes a break every once in a while.  And I've been using that spot to practice guitar because the acoustics are amazing with all that concrete!

When we finished the utility room, we wanted to relocate the oven since it was right in the pathway from the kitchen to the addition.  I gave our old furnace/utility room a coat of white paint, Matt cut some plywood for the floor, and we moved our oven in there temporarily (pray with me that it's a short temporary and not a decade-long "temporary!")  It's really great to have space for all of these things and to be able to close the doors so I don't have to look at it.  It really cracks me up on an almost daily basis!  Gotta do what ya gotta do!

Finally, I was intrigued by the colors we found underneath the doorknob of the closet doors.  Our house was built in '64 and you can see the colors of the decades coming through loud and clear with 60s peach, 70s goldenrod, 80s dusy blue and 90s emerald green & 2000s pure white!

Our next big adventure is to pick up our flooring on Friday!  26 ten-foot boxes should be pretty simple, right?!  Since we're on a slab we couldn't use real nail-down hardwood.  We have to use engineered flooring. It has a hardwood top, but a manufactured bottom.  Our stairs will be made from real walnut that Matt cut out of my uncle's woods (I mentioned this in a prior post.). He hired a sawyer to come to the site and cut it into lumber and it's still drying in my other uncle's wood kiln.  That log in the picture below is a piece from that tree, the flat pieces are samples of the engineered flooring we ordered.

Our biggest priority now is to finish the shower in the master bathroom, once that's finished we can clean up and prep for flooring.  After flooring goes in, we'll be ready to trim!   Once the weather breaks, we can get started on siding the outside.  It seems like a lot to me, but considering how far we've come, I think we're in pretty good shape!

Happy Tuesday!