Me Is Woe Begon

The sink arrived. It is too big. If the toilet were situated only a couple more inches towards the tub, the sink would fit. Alas. (It would fit in the other bathroom (which, by the way, is SMALLER), but I am not - not, I say! - converting that bathroom back to its original pinkness.)

I'm still proud of my bargain sink, given the prices I see some restoration/salvage places charging for them (and especially given it was unused and still in its original box). But. But. But.

Now I'm left with 50 pounds of pink vitreous china I have no use for, and 5 pounds of white, rotting cardboard that still needs to be replaced with something.

Assuming my pink toilet fits (the sink was shipped first), I'll then be left with no other option* but to continue searching for a pink sink that fits. They exist. They must. I've seen small, white wall-mounts on those aforementioned salvage places; I've even seen a seafoam green one (why can't my bathroom be that color?); surely, somewhere out there, is a pink one, just waiting to find a home in my bathroom. (And, surely, it will be too freaking expensive, just like that seafoam green sink. After you've paid $5.25 for a sink, there's no way you'll pay $325!) There is a 20" wide one on eBay at the moment, but the style is abhorrent. Well. More abhorrent. My Holy Grail of pink sinks would be the twin sister of the seafoam green sink above.

*Yes, I realize that I also have the option of just forgoing the whole idea of restoring a bathroom that should never have been made in the first place. But, see, I get obsessive once I decide to do something. The stupider that something is, the less capable I am of letting it go.

Lights!

I'm not entirely sure about how the glass is frosted, but this looks very close to what I want for the bathroom. I do wish they provided a side view - I'm concerned about the '10.5" Ext.' measurement, which I presume is how far it sticks out from the wall. Seems a bit much...



(Light is the Astoria by Quoizel. Yes, I removed the link to a particular retailer that I originally posted, as I found the same exact light elsewhere - several elsewheres - for half the price. The extreme nature of the mark-up at the first site is unfathomable to me.)

I told my grandmother about the pink fixtures last night, and I believe she is the only person who is actually thrilled about the idea in a non-perverse way. I shall have to do her proud.

Now to find a vanity/mirror...

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.

I'm no expert, but...

...I suspect that the way the POs converted the bath into a shower is not the correct way to do it. Destruction is usually pretty satisfying, so I decided to take on the task of dismantling their handiwork this week.

Here's the bathroom as photographed by M when he toured the house for the first time:


(No, I don't know why they had shower doors and a shower curtain up.) I took the shower doors out weeks ago to open the space up a bit.



After I took the doors out, I was able to examine the shower more closely and thus learn How Not To Build A Shower:

• Screw strips of wood into walls over existing wallpaper. Don't bother sealing that or anything else against moisture.


• Nail unevenly cut pieces of tileboard to top two feet of wood, disregarding instructions on back of said tileboard telling you explicitly not to do any such thing.


• Glue unevenly cut pieces of hard plastic sheeting to the rest of the wood and to the existing tile below. The more glue the better.


• Caulk? What's that?


• Nail pieces of wooden molding up around shower edges so as to hide uneven edges and hold shower doors in place.

Fortunately(?), the examination also showed that what was visible of the original tile seemed to be intact. And indeed, after pulling down the plastic, all of the tile except for an area that appears to have once had a built-in soap dish is intact. I consider it a dubious fortune because it's all a hideous, repellent shade of pink. I suspect that the bathroom at one time had a matching pink sink and toilet to go with the pink floor, walls and tub.



21 pieces of wood, 52 screws, and one bandage later (helpful hint: if you think you should be wearing work gloves but are too lazy to find them, find them anyway)...




...destruction phase 1 was complete.

Now to scrape off all that glue and wallpaper backing...