Success! We have running water! This should have been a simple enough project. Remove old sink and vanity. Install new sink and vanity. But we’ve found very little is easy in this house of ours.

The vanity itself was in horrible shape. The humidity of the bathroom over the years had left the wood a bit wonky. When we decided to re-do the bathroom floor, I decided the vanity had to go first. I didn’t want to re-do the floor and then in a couple years mess it up by taking out the vanity. So out it went, courtesy of Steve.

Notice anything odd in this photo? I never gave any thought to it prior to ripping out one vanity and trying to install a new one. Where do the pipes under your sink come from? The wall? Yeah, that would be normal, huh? Nope, our lovely DIY’er decided it was easier to bring the pipes up from the floor. That creates quite a dilemma when putting in a new vanity. Do we chop up the floor of the new vanity we just purchased? And huh, the cold water pipe comes up right where the drawer sliders are – guess those will have to go too. By Sunday afternoon, Steve had determined he was going to cut out most of the floor of the vanity and get rid of the drawers. We would just wood glue the drawer fronts on the vanity later so it would look normal. Fortunately, Steve doesn’t have any power tools. He knew it would take ages to saw through all of that with his little hand saw so he decided to wait until Monday and call his dad.

Monday evening, my brilliant and handy father in law shows up. At least I knew if the vanity had to be chopped up, it would be done well. My FIL is an amazing woodworker. He’s built some beautiful things in their home and we have an amazing (and unbelievably heavy) roll top desk that he built Steve. And he knows how to do just about anything around the house. They go to Home Depot to pick up whatever they needed and my FIL promised to return the next evening to help finish the job.

They worked furiously for a couple of hours for 3 nights and the end result is this:

Lovely, isn’t it? And the drawers work. There is hardware for the door and drawers – I just haven’t put it on yet. And stupid as it is, this is one of the reasons I chose this sink – I love that it lets light through! It’s like having a little refrigerator light under the bathroom sink (yes, I’m a dork). More photos next week after the floor is done. (This is our only bathroom – besides a toilet in a scary room in the basement. So, forgive me my excitement. I know all of you out there with your double sinks and 3 1/2 baths are feeling very sorry for me now.)