Rou Baffroom Edfinshur, Phrt Foruhteen

At long long last, our new baffroom is mostly finished. Well, okay, there's still a bit of work to do, but it's mostly cosmetic and can be accomplished in a weekend.

As I've mentioned, three weekends back we tiled the floor and a couple days later we grouted that mother. All was good and went off with only a handful of hitches and looked fantastic afterward.

Keeping our momentum, two weekends back, we put up the sections of drywall we needed, installed a new toilet intake hose, put the final seal on our toilet flange, removed the old crappy pipes that formerly lead to the sink and installed two new water valves in their place. Of course, we didn't do all that in the proper order. The wife wasn't in the mood to do the drywalling, but really really wanted to install the toilet on Friday night, despite the fact that a major section of the drywalling was directly behind where it would sit. I argued that we should not only install the drywall first, but we should also paint it before the toilet was even brought in. If we had to pull it out to do all that, we were needlessly wasting effort. Didn't matter. The wife was determined that the toilet was going to be in place and working because this would represent accomplishing something that evening. The drywalling could wait a week. Sure, it would tear up the one wax ring we had to do this, but we could just get another. I hated the idea. It galls me to have to do the same job twice in nearly any circumstance, and I said as much. But there was also something to be said for not starting a major argument over something that, truth be told, was a fairly easy installation to repeat. So we put the toilet in. No sooner had we screwed it to the floor then it occurred to the wife that she had failed to remove the old rag she'd been keeping in the neck of the toilet flange to stave off fumes from the septic tank. We had to pull the toilet up to get the rag, which tore the wax ring and kind of took the gloss off our former sense of accomplishment. The next day, we did the drywalling and decided to leave the "terlet" until after painting.

This past weekend, we buckled down and committed to finishing as much of the bathroom as we could. To us this meant the installation of the vanity, sink and toilet and then paint the room. As always, we were of the opinion that these were each straightforward projects that would not take an unnecessary amount of time to accomplish.

Let me say a few words about preparation and planning. It's good to do them both and well in advance of beginning the project. Oh, sure, there's always stuff that comes up you didn't consider, particularly if you're an amateur at this sort of thing, as are we. However, when, say, , but there are certain things that should always be taken into account.

For instance: When shopping for a vanity that has been designed to look like kind of like a table with a sink on top and a drawer for wash cloths or butt paper or whathaveyou at the bottom, with the plumbing exposed between the two, it's often a good idea to measure in advance to know whether or not that plumbing will indeed fit there. We did not. (And I say "we" so as not to get in trouble--not that "I" would have thought to do so had "I" been the one to pick it out.)

As you might now suppose, we did not engage in said necessary measurements when we ordered the vanity back in December. And were a mite put out to discover our mistake at this extraordinarily late stage in the project. One trip to Lowes and a consultation with a knowledgeable plumbing guy later, though, and we had a new set of pipes to install that would pretzel around, allowing the water to flow out and for the pipes not to be resting directly on the lower shelf. We had already been planning to ditch the ugly old pipes anyway.

Our errors in preparation were not over, however. Turns out, not only did our new vanity not allow for the natural fitting of the pipes, but it was too tall for the electrical outlet as well, blocking half of it. We cussed and fumed for a while, then sat down to look at our options. Option #1: Shave off some of the legs of the vanity (not a good option, as they had the leveling feet built in); Option #2: move the outlet up the wall six inches. Fortunately, the electrical wires within the walls came from above, so we figured we could do it. It took a while to accomplish it and was not without its problems, but the finished product came out pretty well.

Before we installed the vanity and toilet, however, we did what previous asshole owners of the house failed to do and for which future owners of the house will sing our praises: we painted the walls behind them IN ADVANCE!!! Nothing huge, just a couple of coats in their silhouette. How's that for planning?

The toilet installation went pretty much according to plan. We put it in, attached the tank and other than a very brief leak that was fixed by tightening a bolt, it was good. I've never said this about a toilet before, but ours is a thing of beauty and grace and low water flow. The vanity installation took a lot longer and was rife with further complications. I'd rather not dwell on them. We survived.

This week I painted the room and was never so happy to see that awful shade of salmon keel over in the river and get flushed out to sea, having failed to spawn. The new color is a lot cooler and ties perfectly into the colors of the floor and the fixtures and the shower curtain upon which we based most of our color decisions in the room. At right is the work from this weekend.

Now all we have left is some caulking, finding a new mirror and new light to go above it, some baseboard to put in and various things like towel racks and shelves added.