It was a good weekend of visiting and working. After spending weeks mulling over countertop options, with the help of my parents I finally got back to some hands on stuff, including revisiting my caulking skills improvement efforts.
It started out we were going to just try to get a toilet into the bathroom upstairs so that we didn't have to traipse down through the kitchen to the 1st floor 3/4 bath, especially at all hours of the night and states of undress. It doesn't normally bother me much, I can navigate this house in the dark. But it's a nice courtesy to my folks to forego that midnight adventure. Okay, it--and everything else--is just long overdue.
Since we were on the subject of plumbing, we also moved the water for the vanity back to the wall where it used to be. It was an ugly move, but it's done and the valves are in place now where I want them. Now I (still) need to buy a vanity.
It was a lifesaver having my folks here to help. I'd never installed a toilet before and that's a lesson I would have dropped fifty times over if I'd been left to do it myself. As it was we more or less destroyed the first wax ring we tried to mount and didn't think to buy an extra at the store. In all I think I took 5 trips to the hardware stores that day.
So we got in the (good) toilet (now I'm sorta shopping for a replacement for the other one which is functional but not elegant... inasmuch as a toilet can be elegant. I'm not sure other people use the word "elegant" the same way math people and coders do, but it's a pretty dang handy word. But I digress.) and we--that's a real loose use of the word "we" too, Dad did nearly all of the work but the shopping and clean up, but let's not let those go underestimated either. Remember I said I made 5 trips to the hardware store!--plumbed the as yet nonexistent bathroom vanity/sink. I was happy to call that good. But when I was at work today I got a call that they started caulking the shower corners (and 2 shirts and countless paper towels and my hands repeatedly) and installing the handle for it too. If I worked on it when I got home, it's possible I could shower upstairs in the morning...
Well, I did pretty much get to work on it when I got home. The caulk is not pretty (no coincidence there are no close ups here), but I think it'll work. I also took apart the shower handle to put an o-ring in order, but I'm still not sure I'll take a shower upstairs tomorrow. It's after midnight and my toiletries are all still downstairs. Plus I've got no curtain or window covering upstairs and the shower is visible from the neighbors' kitchen so... No.
And I shopped vanities on my way home and in the process found the exact same sinks that are included in Costco's granite countertops deal so I can more accurately compare prices. Blam! Take that. I'm still waiting for them to get back to me with a quote. I'm also hung up on corbels, but I'll probably just suck it up and use them. They don't seem as elegant as a cantilevered solution might be.
