I Aten't Dead

But if one could be tried and executed for Crimes Against Good Taste, I might be.

Earlier this week, I bid for and won a vintage toilet and sink set on Ebay for my bathroom retrovation project. If you remember what my bathroom looks like, there might be little warning bells going off in your head. If I tell you that the fixtures match - oh, how they match! - the bathroom, those bells might be turning into full-blown emergency sirens.

(If you've erased the horror of the bathroom from your memory, let me fix that for you with a picture of the floor:)



...That's right. The toilet and sink I bought are pink. To match the pink floor, the pink tub, and the pink wall tiles.

Lest you think I'm doing this merely to shock and terrify unsuspecting visitors, let me list my reasons:

1. I have read, and I firmly agree, that white fixtures only make the pink stand out even more.


2. As I have written before, the tile is mostly in good shape, so I don't find it practical to destroy it. Even though that is probably our eventual plan, it certainly isn't going to be happening any time within the next 5 years. Making what's already there look better is less expensive than any other option.


3. The toilet and sink in there now are not in good shape. They are icky. The sink, in particular, is a piece of utter crap made of cardboard and plastic. Before I found this set, I was planning on just buying a cheap (though not as cheap as the current one) new white sink solely so that I would not have to look at that rotting, stinking hulk any longer. (It's a vanity sink, the bottom of which has almost completely rotted away, so I sincerely mean the 'rotting, stinking' part.)

These are my aesthetic plans for the bathroom (not in order):

• Install pink sink and toilet.


• Paint walls above the tile grey. There are six Sherwin-Williams shades of grey that I'm considering.


• Get this bathroom shelf. I think it has a bit of a retro (wherein 'retro' = ugly, but suitable) look to it.


• Get grey and/or black towels.


• Find and install new mirror/vanity and new bathroom light. This is the part that will really be challenging. I prefer to have sconces on either side of a vanity, and I've seen some nice, vaguely retro ones around, but our sink is too close to the wall for that option. So I need to find another type of light that a) I like and b) doesn't look out of place.
  
  Quite frankly, I think most 50s-era vanities and lights are hideous, so I'm not going to be aiming for authenticity here, just for something that won't look too out of place. The other challenging bit here will be the installation, which for some reason really intimidates me. Possibly because of the mess the POs made of the previous light installation, which I will sum up with two words - 'particle board'.


• Get some sort of framed vintage poster or advertisement for the wall. Preferably with a smidge of pink in it somewhere. I'm considering going meta and using an ad for a pink 50s bathroom.


• Replace bathtub hardware to match whatever hardware I end up getting for the sink.

Now, to be practical, I don't know if this toilet and sink will work out. Assuming they get here unbroken, the sink in and of itself presents the problem of being a wall-mount. None of the directions I've encountered for installing wall-mounts give you advice on what to do if there's tile in the way. I assume I'll have to cut some of the tile out in order to access the wall. I'm a bit worried about tile carnage, but we do have another bathroom full of the same pink tile, conveniently hidden behind wainscoting. (Okay, actually, I'm worried about it being done wrong and having the whole wall collapse, crushing and/or maiming us in the process, and it will be all my fault for having purchased the Sink Of Death. But I'm paranoid like that.)

I also noticed, as I poked at rotting-hulk!sink the other day, that the metal thingies on the wall where the water thingies (Yes, I will endeavor to learn the official terms for these items before embarking on this project!) come though are very, very rusty. Combined with the lump of play-dough (I swear!) holding the pipes together and the state of rotting-hulk!sink, I fear there is a leak. I don't know what, if any, damage has been done to the floor and wall by this. Needless to say, we'll be finding out sooner or later.