This past weekend we set out to install the new vanity in the bathroom. I was figuring it would take a total of 3 or 4 days, including some waiting time, since we were planning on tiling the new countertop. Friday night after getting home from work I eagerly started working on removing the old vanity. I went to take out the sink, but soon realized that the shelf under the sink was in the way of undoing the plumbing, so I started by removing the doors and the trim, which allowed me to get out the shelves. Then I went to turn off the water. After some WD-40 and a little elbow grease, I was able to shut off the water and disconnect the plumbing. Then I ran a utility knife under the sink rim to break the caulk, and then was able to push up on the sink from underneath and wriggle it free. I then worked on removing the countertop and disassembling the rest of the vanity using a hammer and prybar. We might try to reuse parts of it, so I was pretty careful to try to save as much as possible.
Once I had all of the vanity out, I started ripping out rest of the drywall. Here comes the surprise. At first it seemed like some of the 2×6’s behind the drywall were rotten, but after further inspection, it became clear that it was termite damage. This was definitely going to set back a little bit. I continued ripping out drywall for awhile longer, then decided to call it a night.
Saturday morning we slept in until 8, then got working on the bathroom around 8:30. Now I got a better idea of the extent of the termite damage, and we ended up calling Dave and Ellen to get their opinion on how best to proceed. I was thinking about replacing the termite-eaten 2×6’s, but they recommended just putting in a couple additional 2×4’s to have something to nail the drywall into,since some of the exterior siding may be nailed into the termite-eaten 2×6’s. I did replace the insulation though, and Clare and Liz put up a new moisture barrier. At this point I went outside to enjoy the day and cut up some firewood, and left Clare and Liz to hang the drywall. After they got done with that, I helped Clare tape and mud the drywall, and that was pretty much a day.
Sunday morning we got up around 7 and got to work. Clare sanded the drywall mud while I worked on making some fresh bread. Then I washed the walls and put a coat of Killz mold-resistant primer on the new drywall. We let that dry for about 4 hours, and worked on some other projects in the meantime, like splitting wood.
While the primer was drying, I also took the vanity out of the box, and started reading the installation instructions. I was a bit surprised to find that most of the back of the vanity was completely open. It also seemed like there wasn’t very much holding the drawers up. Although the old vanity was not quite as finished-looking, I think that it was probably sturdier. That is one thing that I have been learning as we do home improvement projects. A lot of building materials are actually fairly fragile, especially all the finishing touches.
After taking the vanity out of its box and marveling at how finished it looked, I immediately set out to cut a big hole in the bottom of it for the pipes. I suppose that part of the reason that the back is open is that the assumption is that the pipes are coming out of the wall, not the floor, but ours come out of the floor. My friend Sean leant me his jigsaw, and also gave me the advice of putting some packing tape over the part where you are going to make a cut, to help prevent splintering. I measured the distance from the walls to the pipes, then used those measurements to mark my hole in the vanity. By the time I was done making the hole, it was about time to put the vanity in. Clare helped me carry the vanity into the bathroom and get it shimmed. I only ended up screwing the vanity into the wall in 2 places, since I hadn’t put in that many 2×4’s behind the drywall,but since the vanity is resting on the floor (well, on the shims which are on the floor), I didn’t worry about it too much.
Once I had the vanity shimmed and screwed in, I set about making the countertop. After much searching, we decided on tiling the countertop. We weren’t very pleased with any laminate countertop options, and marble or granite just seemed out of our price range. We also had a pretty good experience tiling the bathtub, and the countertop seemed like it would be easier in many ways. Once again, we watched the Hometime tile video to see how to proceed. They recommended using 3/4″ exterior grade plywood, with 1/2″ cement board on top of that. One thing I had noticed when Clare was putting up the new drywall was that the space for the vanity was not exactly square. The space in front was 54″, but by the wall it was only about 53 1/2″. I took this into consideration when cutting the plywood and cementboard. Since we had a 54″ space, we ended up getting a 48″ vanity, since they only come in full foot increments. Originally we thought we would center the vanity and put some 3″ wood spacers to fill the gaps, but it turns out that Lowe’s (where we bought the vanity) did not have any spacers in the right color. So, instead we decided to leave a 6″ gap on one side, but to have the countertop fill the whole 54″. This left the option of centering the sink on the counterop or on the vanity. We decided on the vanity, so I put that into my calculations for where to cut the hole in the plywood and cementboard for the sink.
Unfortunately I had some problems cutting the hole in the cementboard. I followed the Hometime suggestion of putt the cement board on top of the plywood and then tracing the hole from the bottom. The problem was that I was supposed to flip the cementboard over and trace the other side as well, but because the area wasn’t exactly square it wouldn’t fit the other way. So I tried copying it just by guessing, which didn’t work out very well, so then I decided to try to use the Saws-all to cut the hole, which was working pretty well until the cementboard broke in half. I managed to put the pieces back together, and I think it shouldn’t be a problem.
Our next post will detail the actual tile laying.
The type of surprises a remodel job can bring about are endless. Nice job handling the termite find so well, and getting your project wrapped up.