Zeroing In

When I was driving back from The Society last week – oh, and when you say “The Society” you should say it with a haughty accent, while sipping a cup of tea, with your pinky finger sticking out. Anyway, as I was driving back, I was not in a good mood at all. I had begun to think I had exhausted all my resources for a marble vanity for the bathroom. I had ruled out the 2 that were available locally. The guys at DEA Bath, who said they had 20 to chose from, had pissed me off and I couldn’t go crawling back to them. And now my last hope, The Society (accent/pinky), was a wash. What to do? What to do?

I started to think that I needed to expand my search area. There was Portland to the north and The Bay Area to the south. As I’m thinking about all this, I’m driving home empty handed from Upper Lake, so another road trip does not seem all that inviting at the moment. Not only that, but I’m sure I would pay more in both of those areas. I don’t know how prices are in Portland, but I can plan on adding a minimum of 30% to the cost of the vanity in The Bay Area, and that doesn’t even take in to account the gas money for a round trip. That’s another $75, easy. So if the vanity is $300 here, then I’m looking at $500 or more in The Bay Area. Ugh!

There is always Ebay. As I’ve said before, I don’t relish the thought of buying something like this on Ebay. I would need to get it for a $100 or so, because shipping would be expensive. I also have to worry about it arriving broken. A real possibility. Once I had to deal with UPS insurance on a broken Ebay item. The process took more than 6 weeks start to finish. It was a huge waste of time.

So I started thinking again about the two that are available locally. The first one I tried to use had some issues with the faucet. That and the staining proved to be insurmountable. The other one was the right size and in good condition, but the problem with it was the color of the marble. It was sort of gray in color. It’s not that it was unattractive, or anything. Quite the contrary. I thought it was unique looking and I liked the way the darker veining and the gray color worked together. The problem was, I have the sink legs that I’m going to use.

The sink legs require a 5-inch marble apron under the vanity. The plan has always been to find a white carrara vanity and then get the marble apron locally that will match the vanity. I know I can get it from the same place I got the slab for the kitchen. With the gray color vanity though, I don’t think I can get marble to match it. Even if the guys locally could get it from their supplier I’d probably have to buy a huge piece of it just so I can cut out some 5-inch strips for the vanity. It would be absurdly expensive, and it’s just such a ridiculous idea that I never considered it for a second.

Then on the long drive home I came up with two plans that might enable me to use the gray vanity. First, I could get the 5-inch high strips of the white marble and stain them to match the gray marble. The apron is only viewed on one face. It basically wraps around the vanity underneath. I have a few scraps of marble left over from the slab in the kitchen and I played around with it a little. I think this is doable. The other option is to do away with the sink legs and go to sink brackets or a wooden base. If I did that, I wouldn’t need the apron, and so I wouldn’t need to worry about matching marble.

I like the second option the least, mainly because I really, really like the sink legs I got. They are just really very nice and I really want to use them. If I don’t use them I would need to sell them because they were far too expensive to just tuck away some place. Not only that, but I would then need to find a pair of sink brackets. I’m not interested in a wooden base at all. A pair of cast iron sink brackets are pretty easy to come by, but I would want cast brass. I’m trying to do something nice here, and while painted cast iron can be nice, it’s just not the look I’m going for. I used painted cast iron sink brackets on my kitchen island, which you can see here. They’re nice, just not what I want. And that is really what it’s all about at this point: Getting what I want. It's all about Me, Me, Me.

The huge potential problem with the gray marble vanity is that it is a corner vanity. If that’s the case, the whole idea is sunk. The reason I don't know if it's a corner vanity or not is because the building next door to the antique store where the vanities were for sale burned down. Because of water damage to the antique store in question, the vanities are now in storage. I working with the owners to get it out of storage so I can look at it. The suspense of whether it’s a corner vanity or not is killing me.

Isn’t restoration fun!