A tale of two sinks…

Our powder room came equipped with a double whammy of bad fixtures (is that the right word?) We had the tiniest toilet in the world (capable of accommodating exactly 20% of the average adult buttocks), and a vanity that had been so shoddily caulked that the top could be lifted off, and the unit could be lifted away from the wall.

Usually my first reaction would be to tear it out and start over, but something about the vanity inspired me. Since we had opted to replace rather than repaint our kitchen cabinets, I had never gotten the chance to try my hand at DIY-ing cabinets… and since I was eager to check this item off my Home Improvement Bucket List, I figured the powder room vanity was my perfect victim weekend project.

I popped off the doors and gave everything a good sand…

…followed by a coat of primer…

…then a couple coats of grey paint, before reattaching the doors and mushroom knobs.

The project went as well as I could have hoped…

…but even after re-caulking, the unit stubbornly refused to stick together. We left it for a while as we moved on to other projects around the house, but the painted vanity was always in the back of my mind… bugging me.

The night before our hardwood floors were going to be stained, we made the call to yank out the vanity. It was a ‘now or never’ moment — if the vanity was in place when the floors were done, the wood would be stained around it, meaning we wouldn’t be able to easily swap it out later on.

I got my monkey wrench and went to town. Removing a bathroom vanity and plumbing is actually super easy (and kinda fun…). I found a great tutorial to follow here.

We really lucked out with the plumbing. There had originally been a pedestal sink before the previous owners replaced it with the vanity cabinet, so we didn’t have to make any adjustments to the existing supply lines or waste pipe to make sure they’d fit inside the new pedestal.

It took a bit of shopping around to find the right replacement sink. Big box stores only stock a handful of options, and we were initially discouraged by how tiny and dated a lot of the models looked.

When we found the AquaSource pedestal at Lowes for an absolute steal, I fell in love. It had a spacious, square basin and when I pictured it next to our faux grasscloth walls, I got hearts in my eyes.

To compliment the square shape, we chose the Moen Boardwalk faucet in a spot-resistant brushed nickel finish.

Installation was a bit of a challenge (hence the lack of step-by-step pictures). Following the sink instruction manual, we mounted the basin with a pair of snagtoggle drywall anchors.

The sink is then (presumably) meant to rest on the base, but because of how it’s shaped, the pieces don’t fit together very well (…or at all).

After quite a bit of struggling, unscrewing, rescrewing, shifting, replacing, caulking, plumbing, and testing for jiggliness.. we had a sink.

The faucet was, by comparison, an absolute dream to install (and quite clever, I might add). This was one of our more challenging DIYs to date, but stepping back and admiring our handiwork made it all worth it (…added bonus: finally having running water downstairs!)