This weekend was interesting. That’s putting it mildly. In our great quest for renovating the house to make it more livable, we decided to tackle replacing the sink, mirror and light fixture in the master bathroom. Should be easy, right?
Wrong.
Saturday morning began with emptying the contents of the bathroom. The next step was to remove the ugly mirror and rusted cabinet attached to the wall. The mirror – surprise – had been covering up a patched hole in the wall. Apparently, the previous owners had removed a recessed medicine cabinet and did a very poor job of patching. They didn’t even bother to spackle the cracks. And what they should have done was tape and bed the cracks. Don’t worry – you’ll find out how I know that shortly.
My first words were – I KNEW there was going to be a hole there! I’d had this feeling in my gut all week about it. Even dreamed about the gaping hole we’d find once the mirror was removed. I wasn’t all that far off.
So we plunge on ahead. Man uses a chisel to get the old sink unattached from the wall. Slow and painful process. There’s also this backsplash the previous owners attached to the wall on the side of the sink. They sealed it. Well, the bad news was, when Man removed it, it ripped off all the wall texture down to the drywall. Nice, huh? But it gets better.
The sink is finally ready to go and he removes it. The good news was there was actual wall behind the old vanity. Out to the backyard the old sink goes until we can get to the dump. Back inside, we discover the old vanity was made of… particleboard. Yes, folks. They spared no expense when installing this lovely POS. It was probably the cheapest crap you can get on the planet and install it. Sure it looks decent with a coat of paint but still a piece of crap.
It breaks into pieces as it’s removed.
Now for the really bad news. Not only was the vanity junk, but it wasn’t installed or sealed properly and guess what? There’s water damage and mold on the walls. And there’s a lovely LARGE hole in the drywall in the corner. No wonder we had spiders and bugs! I couldn’t help but feel immediately defeated. Now what?
Clearly the moldy wall can’t stay. We discuss and decide we have to patch it. Neither one of us has ever done drywall before. We’re total amateurs. I get out the phone book and look for a handyman type person who could fix it. We discuss the cost involved. We decide we can do it ourselves. I got online and searched for drywall repair and we watched a 10 minute video (I’m not kidding) and then packed up and went off to Lowe’s for more stuff.
The staff at Lowe’s was incredible. They answered every ridiculous question on plumbing and drywall.
Anyway, we buy the small pieces of drywall, the joint compound, primer, etc. Get home and Man gets them installed. We had a lot of wait time in between for everything to dry. By 7 pm Sunday, he was ready to install the new vanity. But guess what? The old plumbing didn’t match the new plumbing.
It just keeps getting better.
After two more trips to Lowe’s, he figured out a fix and he did get it installed finally. Last night we finished painting the bathroom but there is still more to do. Like put in the new light.
Oh and by the way – the walls were supposed to be tan. Instead they’re PINK. I’m so not happy with that. But at this point, I’m NOT going to repaint. I’ll just live with it.
And now I’m out of time so I’ll have to post more later.
Oh, sweetie, just think of all the great stories you’ll have for dinner parties! (Don’t worry, you will laugh about it in a month or so!) What a disaster for you guys!
And pink? Isn’t it great when the paint doesn’t look a thing like you thought it would? {{Hugs}}