Bathrooms

Our home has two bathrooms.  It is a pretty big home for just two.  One of them is the master bath -- built in an era when "master bath" had a completely different meaning than it does today.  It is accessible from the master bedroom.  It is small, with a tiny shower, a toilet and a pedestal sink.  Not one single cabinet for storage.  And, most shocking of all, not one single outlet.  For this reason, it is Brian's bathroom and a back-up bathroom when the other one is occupied.

The other bathroom is the one that I, all four kids, and house-guests use.  It is larger than the bathroom in our old house.  There is beautiful tile work, a roomy oval tub with a shower, toilet and, of course outlets.  I really like this bathroom and there is just one problem.  The vanity.  It's obvious that when some of the previous owners -- there were two or three sets of owners between the original owners of the house and us, one of those owners ran a tile company and tiled the heck out of this place -- tiled the bathroom, they purchased what appears to be a nice vanity.  It's pretty to look at.  It has cabinets in the front and drawers down the sides.  But, here is the problem.  It's poorly made.

As soon as we moved in, three of the four drawers broke and became unusable and the cabinet doors fell off.  Brian has fixed the drawers and put the doors back on several times.  But, every time, they break again within days.  For most of the three years we have lived here, we've only been able to use one drawer for storage and it doesn't look super classy to have the doors missing from the front of your vanity when guests come over.

A good friend of ours is a master cabinet builder.  He does such beautiful, one-of-a-kind work.  We got a bid on the vanity soon after we moved in and, let's just say, there was no way we could afford him.  But, thanks to my husband being so talented, he was able to do a few drywall jobs for this friend over the past year and instead of getting paid for his work, he said, "Let's just do a trade."  Now that we are moving full-speed ahead on remodel projects, we are finally ready to tear out this vanity and get a new one!  Our friend brought his lovely wife and six kids over last night to take measurements and eat cookies.

I just want to say that I am SO excited to have a piece of his work in our home.  He is expensive, yes, but the quality of his work speaks for itself.  I don't know if we will be able to afford him for future projects (like the downstairs bathroom we are building?).  That remains to be seen.  But, at least we will have this one little gem of fine craftsmanship in our home for decades to come.