a vanity.

For the bathroom, we needed a vanity. Duh. Just preferably, not something like this (taken at the cute little inn we stayed at in Bar Harbor, ME earlier this month) -

A great example of the classic, pre-fab, Big Box, MDF veneer, totally cheesy vanity. Yeah, so no - not that. A few years back, I blogged about making stuff, not buying new stuff, and fixing stuff. So with this bathroom remodel, we want to reuse as much as possible. And we knew for the vanity we wanted to find an old dresser, desk, something, and turn it into a vanity. So in looking up ideas, I came across an article that said in order to accomplish that, we would need to hire an expert carpenter and a crafty plumber.

Ok, then - time to find out if I fit the bill...

Well, first - to find a piece of furniture that would work. We scrounged for a few months, looking at various used furniture stores in town, Offerup, even Craiglist, until we came across a nice-looking, mid-century modern credenza at a local used furniture place that looked like it would fit the bill -

It seemed perfect, with the two doors on either side and a large drawer on the bottom that could remain intact, and the two drawers in the middle that I could remove to make room for the sink and plumbing. It also fit the space we had perfectly, at 48" in length, 32" high, and 21" deep. And it was nice, a quality piece of furniture built from solid ash, with superb joinery and craftsmanship. Like any savvy antique hunter, we first did a quick search online, and were surprised to find it being sold for $1700. It was marked $400, but the guy even knocked a hundred bucks off when we mentioned not needing the hutch that was included. Sold!

Time to take it home and get to work...

Also, in keeping with that M.O. I mentioned earlier about reusing, we found a nice, undermount Kohler sink at the local architectural salvage yard for $60 - so I was determined to make it work, even if it meant having to do some creative carpentry...

First things first - size this thing up for real -

Then start cutting. Oh boy, it was such a nice piece of furniture I felt bad taking a jigsaw, and drill, and crow bar to it. Really, really bad. But it had to be done -

Ouch! Now there was no going back... I even loved the classic, flathead screws!

With the holes for the Kohler widespread sink drilled, the back cut out for the plumbing, and the drawers removed along with some of the joinery to make way for the sink - it was time to measure and make the cutout for it.

I'd first drill, then use a jigsaw to make a rough opening -

Of course, since this was an undermount sink, the opening couldn't just be rough - it had to be perfect. Yikes. So for that, I'd use a router and the template from when I built the router table. Well, the corner of the template anyway. Since it wasn't the right size, it meant taping it down and moving it for each corner. All in all, between that and feeling the pressure of needing to make sure the opening was perfect, it took about two hours to accomplish.

Thankfully, it actually turned out as close to perfection as I could have hoped -

Sweet, plumbing openings done. Then it was time to work on refinishing... I did some research and determined that Zar stripper was the one most-often recommended, so I bought a quart of it and got to work. Indeed, it did a miracle job with the existing finish!

(A test scrap - the piece I cutout for the sink - showing the existing finish on the left and the stripped, then sanded, clean ash on the right... )

Dang - stripped down to bare wood and sanded, this piece looked awfully nice...

But I knew I wanted to stain it darker to contrast with the flooring, grey walls, and white tile so... onward! Well, first - a few more instances of creative carpentry were necessary to make the sink fit. I had to gently pry the front top piece off in order to route it to make room for the drain bulge in the sink -

Reattach, countersink some new screws to hold it in place, then test the sink fit -

Boom. Time to stain... I used a mixture of the two gel stains I got (a brown and a red) for the fan base I built a couple of years ago, in this case 3:1 brown to red. And let me just mention, I love staining. Actually, I love putting on the poly after staining. But either way, finishing a beautiful piece of wood or furniture is so rewarding. Sort of like painting a room - instant gratification.

I swear by the Minwax oil-based satin poly, which I used on the door/drawer fronts, and cabinet legs and sides. But for the top - given the fact this is a vanity countertop - I'd need to find something a little more durable, and waterproof. After more research, it sounded like Waterlox was the way to go. So I ordered a quart of that and got to work... again. Three coats of it, for now. Maybe more in time. It'll be a test to see how a wood vanity top will hold up...

The last bit of creative carpentry I had to do was figure out what to do with the drawer fronts. I first considered hinging them, but that seemed like a) it would be challenging (not that I'm up for a challenge - pretty much this entire project of finding and converting a piece of furniture into another piece of furniture has been one, fun challenge!) and b) the hinges would be visible. So, thinking more how we wouldn't access under the sink all that much (there isn't much room), I opted for a simpler option: just use cabinet door magnets.

But first I had to make the false-front doors, which I did by repurposing one of the drawer bottoms from the drawers I tore apart -

I just glued the drawer fronts to that, then drilled holes for the cabinet handle screws and installed them -

As well as attached the magnets inside the cabinet -

Oh, but wait - there's more! I then realized I also needed to route out a section on the inside of the fake drawer fronts for that bulge in the sink drain -

At long last... it was time to attach the sink, faucet, and trap in order to get it ready to intall in the bathroom (oh, there's a complete overhaul of the plumbing needed in the bathroom to re-align the drain and supply lines for this new vanity - yay!). With a combination of silicone and plumber's putty, I had the sink and faucet installed. Then I had to take a hacksaw to the drain that came with the faucet in order to fit the trap in the limited space left where the two drawers once were. But a couple hours later and it... was... finished!

Now granted, this was taken crammed in J's bedroom between his computer desk and bed, but it's really a pretty beautiful piece of furniture now. We'll each get a side door to call our own, and the large drawer can hold extra towels and such. K came up with the brilliant idea to go with a dark grey ceramic tile floor that would contrast beautifully with the warm wood. And I'll be staining the inside shelves and sides to match the vanity for the built-in cabinet I'm designing and will install to the right of the bathtub.

Vanity cabinet - 1960s mid-century modern credenza from local used furniture dealer
Sink - used Kohler sink from local architectural salvage yard
Faucet - used Kohler faucet found on Amazon
Hardware - new from Rejuvenation

Time spent: I have no idea. Weeks. Lots of things learned. Thankfully, few mistakes made (the one glaring one is I centered the holes for the faucet spout and handles - only to realize the spout doesn't sit centered (because of the drain lift rod), so it's shifted back a little from the handles... oh well). But it was totally worth it.

Oh, and K had found a really solid, heavy, HUGE mirror (she's tired of the tiny one I installed in the other bathroom and made sure for this one she gets a big mirror!) at the new Habitat For Humanity store in town, so we bought that for $30 and I refinished it to also match the vanity -

Next... the plumbing overhaul to make this thing be actually, well, usable...

a bed.

We've been on a kick lately, finding cool things at salvage yards, used furniture stores, and the new Habitat For Humanity store in town. In addition to that $18 lamp, we found a bed. It was an old oak bed, similar in style to the bed I built J years ago.

I've never owned a bed, actually.

In fact, there was a time - when K and I actually met in fact - where my 'bed' was (seriously) a pile of sheetrock -

Maybe a little hard to see in that photo (the pile of sheetrock is wrapped in black plastic), but that was a real deal. Also hard to tell in that photo, but my bedroom at the time didn't have any walls. Well, it had walls, but it was bare studs. Pretty awesome.

Fast-forward a few years...

The bed came in pieces, but the gal at Habitat For Humanity was nice and gave me three scraps of 1x lumber to use as cross-braces. I had to rip them all down to 3-5/8" and then cut them to 60-1/2" in length, but that was easy. I also had to find the bolts that fit the nuts that were embedded in the headboard and footboard. That... was not easy. It actually took three trips to the hardware store where - on the third trip - I literally shoved the footboard into the trunk of my car and took it to the flippin' store. I was not going to make a fourth trip.

(Turned out - the bolt was metric, M7 to be exact, of which the store only had about five bolts of various sizes - none that would work with the bedframe as it was so I'd have to get creative... )

So I drilled a second hole on each end of the two side rails -

The longest bolt was maybe 2" in length (it was metric, and I can't recall the length) - and I had to use a couple of washers and a nut as a spacer to fit the bolt and be able to tighten it. Thankfully, it worked - and after an hour or so I had the bed put together -

Then I had to fit the cross-braces I ripped and cut down to length -

I drilled them -

Then screwed them in to help solidify the bed -

On the middle brace I cut a length of scrap 4x4 to use as a support -

And it was finished -

Then it was just a matter of hauling the box frame, mattress, and all our bedding (K had washed and starched the sheets) back in and put it all together -

Finally... I'm a grown-up (K had already owned a bed, although remarked how now our bedroom feels more 'grown-up').

dining table light!

Hmm... I had to dig up this gem, but I knew I had it...

When Jeff came out to visit back in April 2013 he helped me drag up the dining table I had bought cos it was too hard to pass up, but didn't have room for it the way the living room was organized - so I had shoved it down in the basement.

(Jeff relaxing after that bit of hard work... )

Anyway - yeah, that was back in 2013... Since then, the table has stayed. Without light. It was cool in the summer cos it didn't get dark until after nine o'clock. In the winter, we used the living room lamp over by the Bechstein.

Until tonight.

This past weekend, K and I stopped by the new Habitat For Humanity store and - in searching for a desk or table or dresser (something, anything) that we'd turn into a bathroom vanity (we bought a Mid-Century Modern credenza at a different used furniture store for dirt cheap - along with a sink from a salvage yard - but more on that when we get going again on the bathroom... ) - I came across an old lamp for $18.

What the heck, we bought it.

And just to test it out, tonight I bought a $6 hook and a $4 extension cord - of which I cut off the end and wired it to the end of the lamp cable after hanging it above the table.

Turns out... we really, really like it.

It's a gorgeous Tiffany glass shade that, well, just happens to coordinate really well with the beautiful mission lamp K bought me two year's ago for Christmas that's over in the opposite end of the living room -

It'll be downright weird to have, well, actual light over our dining table! Now I'll just need to wire the circuit - which I'll do after I wire the lights in the bathroom (it'll be on the same circuit - all the overhead lights now are run off one circuit - well, they are since I wired the porch light six years ago).

car stereo [2].

Bleh. After I installed the new stereo in Spencer, I realized it could sound even better... with an amp and a subwoofer! The thing is... I already had both, and they'd been taking up space in a basement cupboard ever since Oliver (my previous car, a '95 Toyota Tercel) was totaled - although I ended up selling him to my now father-in-law for him to use as a commuter. He stills drive Oliver... I think.

But anyway - I had an old subwoofer and amp sitting down there, along with all of the necessary cables (power for the battery, ground, turn-on, RCA, and 16-gauge speaker wire) in a plastic bin, also just taking up space. And so I carved out a couple of evenings before Jeff's and my road trip to Glacier National Park to get them installed...

First, I had to get power from the battery through the firewall, which turned out to be pretty easy. I poked a scratch awl through the main rubber grommet where most of the wiring was already being routed -

Then - after taping the 8-gauge power cable to a piece of 12-gauge electrical cable - I stuck them both through the hole, then reached up under the pedals on the driver's side of the firewall and yanked the mess through -

Along with everything else I already had, I installed the battery fuse. It was just a simple matter of connecting the 18" lead from the battery to the fuse box -

So power then was done. Next, the amp (an old Phoenix Gold XS4300) -

came with a potentiometer that adjusts the bass output I needed to install -

I had the perfect spot - right next to the 12V adapter in front of the stick shift. So I just quick drilled it -

When I had yanked the stereo before selling Oliver, I apparently (not sure why?) cut the cable for the pan pot. The thing is, the end is a 4-cable telephone jack. So I had to go get a box of jacks. Thankfully, from all of the structured wiring I've done in the house, I already had the CAT5 and RJ11 crimper. So it was really easy -

Then I plugged it into the amp -

I'd later find out... it didn't work. After double-checking I had crimped the wires correctly in the jack, I inspected the connection at the pan pot side. Yep - only the black wire was hanging on, so I had to break out the soldering iron to reconnect the other three (my wife helped hold the soldering flux) -

And done -

Well, it's backwards - so turning the pot right turns down the volume on the sub, but whatever. Maybe some day I'll fix it. I probably should have read this first... so I'll probably end up rewiring it.

*** UPDATE 10.11.16 - yeah, it bugged me. So I fixed it. (I just reversed the black wire to the other end, then put the green/yellow in the middle, and the red where the black had been) ***

Anyway... next, I had to run a bunch more cabling, which is how I spent the rest of that first night - just pulling cable through the car after removing a bunch of the trim sections. The power turn-on lead went over to run alongside the speaker and power cables under the door trim (you can run power with high-level speaker wire without getting any noise interference, but not with low-level RCA cables - those must be placed away from power cables or engine whine will likely be a problem through the system), and speaker wire went into the trunk for the subwoofer.

I gave it a valiant effort to pull the 16-gauge speaker cable through the factory door boot on the driver's side to connect the component speakers in the doors but... nope, it wasn't happening. So I ended up just splicing the 16-gauge stuff onto the factory wiring harness adapter -

After all was said and done, it kind of looked like a huge mess -

Note: power, ground, and turn-on lead on the left along with the speaker wire (the amp's inputs are arranged intentionally, with power and speaker inputs on one side, and RCA inputs on the other), and the RCA and pan pot on the right. I did some quick level-setting before bolting the seat back in so I could leave the next day to pick up Jeff at Sea-Tac and make the drive across the Pac NW to Glacier...

Just a couple of days after returning though, I was driving home from work and all of a sudden the sub sounded awful - like it was rattling something obnoxious. So I pulled it out of the little enclosure and inspected. Bleh - in the seven years of sitting down in the basement, the foam surround had deteriorated and begun to separate from the speaker cone -

Rather than spend $500 on a new sub (which may or may not fit the same volume box I had), I opted to go the thrifty route and spend a whopping $20... on a replacement foam surround kit from Simply Speakers. Brilliant. Then got to work scraping off the old surround -

The kit comes with the foam surround (duh) and some special glue that works pretty quickly, but still allows time to line up the speaker cone's voice coil in the magnet to make sure it's not rubbing during its length of travel. In a couple hours, I had the new foam all glued (to the cone and the frame) and the gasket reapplied -

Boom. Good as new and reinstalled in the trunk -

And now neither it nor the amp are taking up space in the basement...