3 Room Non-Challenge: Getting to the Counters
So, apparently part of not challenging myself is not sticking to a regular posting schedule, but I will be writing because stuff is happening!
Remember these secondhand Formica countertops I picked up at the ReStore and cut up with a saw to fit the space? Early this year, we were finally able to thank them for their service. Thanks to Buy Nothing, they’ve begun their third life in someone else’s kitchen now.
Now we have white quartz, definitely a big upgrade. Pro tip: if you can settle for a warm white instead of a cool one, the exact same material costs a ton less. (Don’t mind the clutter, the pictures will be “during” for a while. And we learned to just go to the local fabricators instead of the big boxes. The price came out about the same and the people we talked to about it know a lot more.
Now, usually I take months and months to ponder over big expensive things, but this time we walked into a place and walked out with a contract and a templating date. So, in the process of setting it all up we changed our minds about the sink and got this one with the squarer corners, then the place mixed it up and had to re-cut the sink opening. Oops. They didn’t make us pay.
But as soon as we got this done we got just a smidge of buyer’s remorse. I put a slab of oak on one side of the stove that I always meant to sand and oil and use as a chopping block. But was it a mistake to keep it? We wanted to consider resale for the things that buyers actually care about after years of focusing on woodwork and windows.
But before we got around to finishing the room, Tito told me that the water pressure dropped on the bathroom faucet and that he wanted me to fix it. I couldn’t figure out how to – the faucet was on the cheap side. So I took the sink out and we didn’t have one. No more low water pressure!
We bought a vintage sideboard to convert into a vanity ages ago but kept this project on indefinite hold because doing it would be disruptive. Perfect timing, now we have no sink while we’re both in the house all the time! And… the plumbing I had installed 7 years ago didn’t turn out to be in the right place. So in came the plumber to make that right…
And now here we are. The plywood strips are level; the floor is not. So the front legs of the cabinet don’t touch the floor. I thought I’d need to fix this, but it seems like it’s actually pretty easy to ignore. Yes, the cabinet is low. We have vessel sinks which have also been stored for this project for something like 2 years.
And here we are.
As for the buyer’s remorse, we killed 2 birds with 1 stone. The quartz we got for the kitchen costs a lot less than Carrara marble, so we ordered the same material for up here, and this order includes a replacement for the piece next to the stove. The installation is scheduled for this Saturday so we’re on our way back to a fully functional house!
3 Responses
The kitchen has come a long, long, way since the beginning… and it now looks amazing! The bath is shaping up to be fun as well… keep up the good work!
The kitchen countertops look amazing! And although a butcher block piece next to the stove is a fine idea, there are a couple of good reasons why the quartz looks better. For one thing, the kitchen is very small, so having different counter surfaces breaks up the space and looks choppy. For another, quartz is the lowest maintenance (other than Formica) countertop material, and the butcher block has to be constantly oiled, especially if it is next to a sink or a stove, where hot liquids might damage it.
Two suggestions about the vanity–(1) You can easily buy replacement mid-mod peg-shaped legs. Measure your space, get legs slightly longer than that, stain to match, then shorten them at the wide end to fit. (2) Since the vanity is bolted to the wall, you can saw off all the legs and have a hanging vanity, which is also mid-mod correct.
There’s a cove detail along the bottom of the cabinet that curves down the leg, so it really looks best with the legs it has. Right now there’s about an inch below them and it’s hard to notice, but I thought of trying to cut a block to the shape of the leg and stick it underneath. I have some scrap mahogany in the basement.