12/11/14

Full Bathroom Reno: Mirrors, Vanity, and Moving More Pipes

We left off with all new electrical in the bathroom, and a vent pipe moved. The vent pipe had to be moved for the electrical, so the new vanity light could go where it needed to go to be centered. You can see the newly moved black vent pipe and the new light locations below. The light on the left has a new fixture already installed, and the one on the right doesn't. It simply has the bracket and mounting hardware, since we knew we would have to remove the light again as soon as we put up sheetrock. The one on the left is installed temporarily so we had some sort of light while we worked.


Although we were thankful to have all of these problems solved, a new problem was discovered. Unless we seriously rerouted some pipes, we could not have the mirrored medicine cabinets I picked out. After much discussion, we opted to leave the pipes as they were, and purchase a new vanity that would be configured to double sinks for better storage, and use flat mirrors without medicine cabinets.

I was honestly not pleased at all about that at first. I thought our vanity was fine, and it was a shame to buy a new one. But, we forged on and shopped around and purchased a shiny new vanity online, and had it shipped to our local store. The vanity has drawers in the middle and cabinets on the outside, so it is better suited for double sinks.

When we got the vanity in, we placed it in the bathroom just to see, and it was stunning. I withdraw any negative thoughts or comments I had on purchasing a new vanity because it is a million times nicer than what was in there. The craftsmanship is stunning, it's professionally finished, the layout is better, and it even has soft close drawers. My favorite feature might be all of the trim and molding- it looks more like a furniture piece. I'll show that soon.

Unfortunately, it presented a new problem. I'm learning that in (major) DIY, things almost never go as you planned. The new problem was that now there were different pipes that needed to be moved. The drain pipe and water pipe both intersected with the drawers in the new vanity.



In the photos you can see that the two pipes on the left interfere with the drawer area. When we purchased the piece, we thought there would be enough room behind the drawers, but there just isn't.

Due to being in a rush to complete the bathroom, mostly due to our baby on the way, Jake suggested just hiring a plumber to move the pipes. I called over 14 plumbers and contractors, and no one could get it done. That is a story for another day, but I can simply say, I am incredibly disappointed so far with my personal experience with contractors/plumbers.

Even though these particular plumbing issues were things Jake had never dealt with before, he decided to attempt it after our negative experience with contractors/plumbers. As I mentioned in my 29 Thoughts on Thankfulness post, this is one of the things I love most about him. He can literally do anything that he puts his mind to. Anything. He will work hard and figure it out. And, the proof is in the pudding! It took him a couple of nights but he got the pipes moved. The time he spent was only an hour or so, but the pipes were so old that it took several soaking sessions with WD40.



You can see in the photos the pipe to the far left was routed to go straight out, and the middle pipe was rotated to also go straight out. With these changes, our vanity now works in place! Next up, drywall.

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