No Surprise, I Guess

I had a small leak in the drain assembly on the bathroom vanity. It was at a factory joint, but it turned out to be my fault. I thought it was a soldered joint. It was right where the tail piece met the underside of the drain. I didn’t realize this was a threaded tail piece that screwed up in to the drain.

I called DEA Bath and got Jim (Tim is no longer there). He explained that the I was supposed to remove the tail piece and apply pipe dope and then reattach it. As he put it, they don’t do this at the factory because it’s not uncommon for people to need a longer tail piece. If it was screwed down tight at the factory it would be hard to get apart. You don’t want to take a pair of pliers to it and ruin the finish.



As soon as he said “a longer tail piece” bells went off in my head. That’s exactly what I need. If you look at the drain in the picture above, you can see that extra 6-inch chrome tail piece just above the P trap. To me it sticks out like a soar thumb. That should be a single piece of nickel pipe that runs from the basin to the trap. DE Bath sells a 12-inch long, inch and a quarter, nickel tail piece. I can use it to replace both the original nickel tail piece and the chrome addition. It’s $28, and I swore I wouldn’t spend another cent on this vanity, but what the hell.

I also found a 30-inch door for the bathroom. I thought I was going to need to cut down a 32-inch door. A few weeks back I measured all of the doors I have stacked up in the door room and I thought they were all 32-inch. I have 18 of those Eastlake doors, believe it or not. Anyway, on Monday I decided to search out a good candidate for trimming and I started measuring them again. I was hoping to find a door that had already been trimmed a little. Sure enough, one of them was 30-inches.

It needs a little help, but it’s not too bad. The paint needs to be stripped off, that’s a given, but beyond that, it has a thin crack in one of the panels, and another very minor crack near the mortise for the lock set. It even had a very nice, working lockset in it. So that’s the job this week – getting the door ready.

Happy 4th everyone!

That Sinking Feeling

That’s the feeling I had yesterday when I drilled the holes in to the floor for the sink legs. Each leg has a small post on the bottom that needs to fit in to a hole in the floor. The wall brackets for the sink need to be mounted on to the subway tile. That means more drilling through tile.

Months back I made a plywood template I would use to make sure the holes were drilled in the right place. The legs have a double off-set, so it was not a given exactly where the holes would go. This thing didn't exactly come with instructions. Or if it did, I'm sure they were tossed out 100 years ago.

After a little figuring, I found the sweet spot, but this meant the template had two sets of holes for the legs. Then later I switched to a slightly smaller vanity top so I had to reposition everything on the template. So now both the wall brackets and legs had multiple holes on the template.

Yesterday I was just a little foggy all day. It was just one of those days that I was a little out of step with the rest of the world. I almost put-off drilling in to the tile, but I really wanted to get the sink mounted.

I drilled away and wasn’t as cautious as I normally am. After I pulled up the template I really didn’t have a good mental image of myself double checking to make sure I got the right holes. It was all kind of a blur. I had this horrible feeling I had screwed up.

In the end, I didn’t, but there was a good hour from the time I drilled the holes until I tested the fit of the sink that I just had a pit in my stomach. After months of work and planning I thought I would either end up with a crooked sink or maybe some extra holes in the tile floor and wall.

You have no idea how relieved I am to have this thing installed. Tomorrow I’ll mount the sink and hook up the plumbing.

Second Marble Vanity Is Here

I mentioned last week or so how I bought a second antique marble vanity on Ebay. It arrived today. I was never thrilled with the first one I bought, but after searching high and low it was pretty much the only thing I could find that would work in the bathroom. Wouldn’t you know it, I would find an even better one after I bought the first one. An even better one that was also cheaper.

The main problem with the first one was the color of the marble. It was kind of a smoky gray color. It’s not that I didn’t like it, it’s just that I have a lot of other marble in the bathroom and adjoining kitchen, and all of that is white marble. Plus, the marble skirting that will go around the sink is also white. I attempted to stain the skirting to match the top, but I didn’t go far enough. The plan was to stain it some more once everything was assembled. I’m glad I waited now. The other problem with the original top was that the milling did not go around all three sides. It was beveled on the front but not the left and right side.



This one was only $114 with shipping, so it’s not huge investment. The picture above is what it looked like seconds after unpacking. You can see it has some nasty discoloration on the upper left. Over all it was very dingy and had a lot of mold on it.

I took it outside and cleaned it with soft scrub cleanser and 180 grit sand paper. I had to get very aggressive with it. I then sanded it with 220, 320, and 400 grit. I may try and polish it little, but I don’t have anything at the moment to polish it with.



The results are dramatic. There is still some minor discoloration in that one corner, but that seems to show up more under the flash of the camera than in real life. The best part is, it now matches the apron. As you can see, this one is beveled on 3 sides. This is how it should look.



Here is the original one. It’s just not as nice in my opinion. You can also see that I was not able to get all of the staining out of this one. To be fair, though, I was not as aggressive in cleaning this one. That might look better with more effort.

Now, does anybody want to buy a slightly used, smoky gray, marble vanity. I can let it go for about $100, not including shipping.

The Making of Miss Marble Vanity

Just like with Miss America, a lot goes in to making Miss Marble Vanity. I mean, with Miss America, sure they start with a reasonably attractive woman, but that’s only the beginning. There is the tweezing, blow drying, shaving, collagen injections, gallons of makeup, hair die, colored contacts, binging and purging, and the liberal use of masking tape and Vaseline. And then there’s the talent portion of the event. Let’s not forget about that! No, the making of Miss America doesn’t happen all by itself, and it was no different with the bathroom vanity.

When I ordered the pieces of marble for the apron I wasn’t exactly sure how this thing was going to go together so I ordered them a little long. As it turned out I did need to cut about and inch off each piece and I had to miter the corners. I also had to drill several holes for fasteners and notch two of the ends so they would fit in to the brackets. It was a lot more drilling and grinding than I thought I was going to have to do.

Here’s a shot of it again {siiiigh}


Because of the way it’s put together there are no visible fasteners. It’s actually quite clever and it sort of reminded me of the way the big 1890s cast iron stove in the kitchen went together. With that thing there was only two screws for the whole stove. All of the other dozen or so parts use gravity to be kept in place. Most of the parts just sort of hang off the main body of the stove. With the vanity, it is the weight of the top that does a lot of the work of keeping it together.



The first pieces of the puzzle are the two wall brackets. These get mounted to the wall with two screws. There is a half inch high, 3/8ths inch diameter post on the top. The side piece of the marble apron was notched to fit in to the bracket. Nothing secures the marble in the bracket.


Next there are the front legs. As you can see in that first shot the legs have a double off-set. I’m sure there is some formula by which I could get the angle of the leg and measure the distance between the angles and figure out what the off-set is. I just took a few guesses and figured out it was a 3-inch off-set towards the inside, and a 3-inch off-set towards the back. There is a post at the foot of the leg that fits in to a hole on the floor.



The post is hollow and threaded and will receive a ¼-inch bolt from underneath. This keeps the seemingly delicate and graceful leg from being pulled or accidentally kicked out from under the vanity. The legs themselves are cast brass and weigh about 5 pounds each.




At the top of the leg, the 5-inch high right-angle pieces that receives the marble apron has another threaded post to receive a screw. You can see how a mitered the marble. I did this with an angle grinder fitted with a diamond blade. That worked very well for shaping the marble. The perforated piece of angled steel I bought at the hardware store. It is secured with a bolt to the back of the leg. I then drilled some holes in to the marble that correspond to holes in the angle steel. The holes only go in to the marble about 3/8ths of an inch. Right now there are wooden dowels in there but I will eventually secure bolts in to the marble with epoxy. They probably originally used lead. The bolt will have a nut and washer threaded on from the front to secure the apron to the legs.

You can see how the angled steel sits a little proud of the marble apron. This serves the same purpose as the posts that stick out on the top of the wall brackets. This angled steel piece, of course, is just something I made up. I would imagine that originally, back in the 1890s, the legs came with factory made brackets that had posts on them. Who knows where they are now. Regardless, it servers the same purpose. Both the posts on the wall brackets and the angled steel that sits a little high will fit in to grooves and holes on the under side of the vanity, as you can see in the pictures below.

Grooves for the front


Holes for the back


The top weighs well over 50 pounds even without the sink and faucets. Once that is placed on to the legs with the apron, and all of the peices are fit together the vanity becomes very rigid. Even without the top the legs and apron are reasonably firm, with the exception of where the apron meets the wall brackets. I’m considering drilling another hole on the inside of the wall bracket, and a corresponding hole on the apron and adding a dowel there. There is no way to do a bolt there. I’m not sure it’s necessary though, because the final piece will be a marble backsplash that will keep the back part of the top firmly on the wall brackets. The only way to get it off the wall would be to break the stone.

After I was satisfied with everything I took it all apart. The wall brackets need to get plated and I needed to clean the top. That came out well. I also tinted the apron pieces a little so the color more closely matches the top. That came out pretty good too. The plywood frame that you see in the first picture will act as a template for when I do the final installation. Who knows when that will be. This bathroom is really dragging on.

Next up: The bead board ceiling.

There she is, Miss Marble Vanity

There she is, your ideal
The dreams of a million Vanities
Who are more than pretty

May come true in The Petch House
Oh she may turn out to be
The queen of vanities

There she is, Miss Marble Vanity
There she is, your ideal
With so many beauties
She'll take the bathroom by storm

With her nickel legs and marble top
And there she is
Walking on air she is
Fairest of the fair she is
Miss Marble Vanity

The Last Piece of the Puzzle

Round and round he goes, where he stops nobody knows.

I got the bathroom vanity today and this is the very first one I looked at a few months ago. I then looked on Ebay for a vanity. I tried to negotiate with DEA Bath for a vanity, but that fell through. I drove to Upper Lake and was insulted by Sheldon to try and buy a vanity. And after all of that I got the one I first looked at, but not before the store that had it almost burned to the ground and the vanity ended up in two different storage units, until it was delivered to my door today.

Whew!

The reason I didn’t like it the first time I saw it was because of the color of the vanity. Anybody’s who has read my blog over the past month or so knows I got my hands on a very, very nice pair of 1890s sink legs. I then had the matching wall brackets made. The wall brackets and sink legs need a marble apron to go with the vanity. I thought I would have a hard time matching the color of that first vanity and so I decided against it.

I then drove all over hell and half of Georgia and came up empty handed and so I went back to the start. In hind sight, it turns out that not being able to match the marble is not such a bad thing. First off, any 100+ year old vanity I get is going to be in less than pristine shape. I accept that, and in fact I relish it. If I got a white marble vanity it would be a few shades darker than it’s original white after so many years in service. If I went and bought new marble skirting, the new skirting would be brilliant white in comparison. Not good.

By getting the darker marble I can get new marble skirting and then stain it to match. I already played around with water colors on a scrap piece of marble and it should work fine. So really, no matter which antique marble vanity I get, getting marble skirting to match would be difficult. The problem with the first vanity – the one I ended up getting – was going to be a problem with any vanity I got. So it doesn’t matter.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the marble vanity for the bathroom….

Ta-Da (bowl not in picture)


It’s actually very dirty and desperately needs to be cleaned, but you get the idea. The best part is, now that I have it, I can finish up the framing in the bathroom and seriously think about rough-in plumbing and going in to debt up to my eyebrows buying tile.

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!

The Search Continues

Last week I drove down to Upper lake to see a man about a vanity. The guy’s name is Sheldon, and he's the owner of The Antique Plumbing Society of America. The name should have warned me as to who I was dealing with. Without question the guy had the biggest selection of antique plumbing supplies I have ever seen in my life. And this wasn’t the everyday stuff either. He just had a stunning array of super high-end Victorian plumbing parts from the 1880s and 1890s.

Ever seen a Victorian cast iron Bathroom Pool? Picture a super fancy cast iron tub that is 4-feet square and stands about 3 feet tall with huge furry paw feet. I didn’t even know such a thing existed, yet there it was sitting in his showroom. Most of his stuff is mansion quality and is so far out of my price range, it’s not even funny. I called him asking about marble vanities and he said he had a few, so I made the drive down anyway.

He is only open Friday through Monday, but I told him I could only make it down on Thursday so he opened up special for me. I thought that was very nice and I had high hopes of finding a vanity. It started out well enough. He seemed a bit talkative, but I was so star struck by his inventory that I didn’t notice at first. After about 10 minutes of talking to him I noticed he interrupted me almost constantly. There is nothing more irritating than to be constantly interrupted by someone who talks like they’ve had 2 too many cappuccinos. On top of that, the vanities he had wouldn’t do, so my mood turned sour quickly.

He was really a high pressure salesman. When I started to mention the problems with his vanities he would cut me off with some ridiculous ways to change them or fix them. He would pepper his comments with expressions like, “What’s the matter, you don’t want to spend the big bucks to do it right?”. To which I would snap back that I didn’t care about the money I just wanted what I wanted and what he had wasn’t it.

The type of vanity I’m looking for is rather common place and would not have been in the mansions that most of his stuff came out of. The simple marble vanities he showed me first may sound high-end, but they were middle class for the day. We moved over to the expensive stuff and he showed be a stunning 4 foot long, 2-inch thick marble vanity and again gave me the, “Uh, you want to do it right and spend the big bucks? How about this?”. The vanity was leaning up against the wall. It was in pristine shape. I had seen one of these before and I knew it should have 3-inch thick glass legs with nickel/brass feet. I asked if he had the legs for it. He said, “Oh, I can get them”. To which I replied, “Yea, well, when you get them, give me a call”, and I walked over to the next one.

The next one was another monster marble vanity only this one was pink marble with the original hand painted sink and all the hardware. It was beautiful and I asked how much. He said $4,500, to which I said, “I don’t like the color. What else you got.” At this point I knew I wasn’t going to be buying anything from him, but I was enjoying strolling through his collection, while at the same time giving him a hard time about his stuff. The guy was unbelievably annoying.

Again, he started egging me on about not willing to shell out the big bucks for a proper bathroom. He showed me a very nice faucet, but badly in need of replating. He wanted $750 for it. I didn’t flinch at the price, but just waved it off as if I was unimpressed. His most ludicrous statement was when he told me I should be willing to spend $20,000 on my bathroom, and if I do, I can expect to get an additional $100,000 for my house when I sell it. I told him he was nuts and I asked him to show me some embossed toilets.

He had about 30 antique toilets in the shop but only 4 of them were the really nice embossed toilets. Of those, 3 of them were the wash-out variety (old technology) and one was the wash-down variety. The wash-down works like a modern toilet. He again started in with the, “So, what do you think? Are you going to spend real money on a proper toilet, and do it right?” I was really getting sick of this by now. I looked in to the bowls and asked, “Is this all you’ve got? I don’t want a wash-out bowl”. He pointed to the last one and said it was a wash-down. It had a bad break around one of the bolt holes with an absolutely horrible repair job with silicone adhesive. All of the pieces where there but it looked like a 2 year old made the repairs. I looked at him with a disgusted look and asked him if that was one of his repair jobs. He told me he didn’t do it, but he could repair it good as new and I could have it for $1,700. Again, I didn’t even blink at the price and just said, with an air of irritation, “Yea, well, I wanted something today. What else you got?”

I don’t think he listened to half of what I said , but finally he was starting to show a little irritation of his own. He started to get a little animated and said, “Ok, ok, you want to see the good stuff now. Uh, you want to see the museum. These are my private pieces. Come one, I show you the good stuff”. His shop was in a huge red barn and there were stairs that led up to a loft. As we walked up the stairs he kept muttering about how this was his private collection and none of it was for sale.

We got up to the top of the stairs and there were about 12 of the most stunning toilets I’ve ever seen in my life. Each one was made from fine china, hand painted, and over-the-top with a capital T. This is the stuff that the Vanderbilts and the Carnegies crapped in. A lot of them had their original toilet seats and some of the plumbing was still there. It was just an amazing collection. I walked down the row and back and all the while he was saying stuff like, “Uh, come on, you ever see stuff like this before?” I tried to tell him about an 1880s HAJOCA toilet that sold on EBay 2 weeks ago for $2,200, but he kept interrupting me. Finally, I looked down the row once more and then back at him and said, “Yea, these are pretty good, but you should see the one my friend Chuck just got. Now that’s a toilet!”. He went on with more of his blustering about how his was the finest collection on the west coast. He’s probably right, but I would never give him the satisfaction of hearing me say that.

As I was about to go downstairs, I pointed to one of the least ornate toilets in the group and asked if it was for sale. It was something I’d never seen before, but it could almost be considered common when grouped with the others. It was made by JL Mott and was just stunning. He looked at me with a big smile and said once again, “These aren’t for sale. I told you, this is my museum”. I said, “Don’t tell me that. Everything’s for sale”. He said, “Nope, not these.” I said, “You mean to tell me, if I offered you $4,000 for that bowl, you wouldn’t sell it to me?”. He blanched and almost choked. His eyes bugged out and he asked, “Are you offering me $4,000 for that bowl!?”. I said, “No, of course, not. I just saying, everything has a price”, and with that I turned and headed down stairs.

At the base of the stairs was a small room with shelves, soap dishes, and toilet paper dispenser. As a parting shot I went in a picked up a very nice nickel plated toilet paper dispenser and asked how much it was. He couldn’t just give me a price, he had to sell it to me. “Well, that one’s only $40 because it’s missing the wooden roller. If it had the roller I’d want a lot more for it”. While I was looking at it he grabbed another one out of a box and once again started giving me shit about “not willing to spend the big bucks”. He holds it up to me. It looked brand new and he says, “How about this one? New old-stock: $150”. It was stunning. I looked at it and said, “I don’t really care for that style”, and then I held up the $40 one and said, “But I’ll give you $20 for this one”. That was the last straw. He started saying stuff like, “All right! What do you think this is a garage sale? This isn’t a flea market here”. I headed towards the door. When we both got to the door I politely thanked him for his time and thanked him for opening up for me. We had our moments, but I think he kind of enjoyed it. I know I did.

I’m No Longer a Virgin

I went in to my first Big Box store today. Actually, I just went there to use the rest room, and I didn’t buy anything, so maybe that only counts as foreplay, and on some level I am still a virgin. I drove to a town called Upper Lake to look at marble vanities and passed through Ukiah, CA on the way. I really needed to use the bathroom and I saw a Home Depot just off the highway so I pulled in.

The store was big, but really, not as big as I thought it would be. Ukiah is a mid sized town, so I’m sure there are bigger Home Depots. The selection was very nice. I spent some time in the plumbing area since I have bathroom on the brain right now. I was impressed with the display of Kohler toilets. Very nice designs, but they have the stupid exposed trap. I really, really, really don’t understand why most modern toilets have this. The rental bathroom I used for the first few years I lived in this house had a new Elger toilet with the exposed trap. It was my first experience with that and the damn thing was almost impossible to clean.

Of course, selection is important, but being the worlds biggest cheapskate, what I wanted know about was pricing. The problem was, even though I’ve been buying a lot for the bathroom lately, it’s all been used and salvage. I haven’t started rough-in plumbing yet, so I haven’t been buying copper and ABS. For the kitchen I bought the faucets new and the copper sink, but that was about it. I bought those on-line, so it’s not a fair comparison to our local stores. I didn’t see the exact same make and model, so I couldn’t make a comparison anyway. They didn’t have my fridge, either.

I looked for subway tile, and I was amazed that I couldn’t find any. I thought that stuff was oh-so trendy right now. I walked down the tile isle twice looking for it. I would have asked, but there was no one around. Later, when I saw a clerk, I was too lazy to want to go all the way back over to the tile isle to be shown where it is.

I did buy 3-feet of 1X6 oak for the high-tank a few weeks back. I paid $2.20 a foot locally and HD had it for $1.95 a foot. I think that’s 13% less. Of course, I had to drive 300 miles round trip to get that price, but I can see saving a lot over the cost of a whole project if we had one local and I bought everything there. This assumes that those savings are across the board on most items.

I wanted to see if they had the 3M 5200 Marine Adhesive Caulk I want to use in the bathroom. Once I found the caulk isle, though, it was blocked off! They had these stupid orange gates blocking the entrance at both ends. It said something about cleaning the isle, but I didn’t see a mess. I saw several other isles blocked off with the same gates. I’m not sure what was going on. I never saw anything on the floor, and it seems there was never anyone close enough to ask about it when ever I encountered one. It was about 8 AM on a rainy morning and the store was deserted. I saw only one other customer and about 5 clerks the whole time I was in the store. The real challange was getting out the place. I couldn't find the exit. {blush}

As for the marble vanities, the whole trip was a bust. They guy had 3 to chose from, but for one reason or another none of them would work. On the drive home I was really getting bummed out about the whole thing, but it gave me time to think, and I think I may have come up with a plan. More on that later.

Some may recall how I had a plan to trade a bunch of old toilets and sinks to DEA Bath for store credit. The credit would then go towards an antique marble vanity and other plumbing supplies they offer. We had a tentative deal for about $600 in store credit, but the whole thing fell apart last week. I’ve had good dealings with them in the past, but this time it was one delay after another. I was dealing with a guy named Mat and it was terrible trying to get questions answered and to get him to follow up on things. After about 6 weeks I told them to go to hell. Well, not in so many words, but the deals is off, all the same.

After I fired off an angry email and told them to forget the whole thing, John, the owner or manager, I’m not sure which, called me but I wasn’t home. I never called him back. There are still some things I’m going be buying from them, because I just can’t get it any place else. When I do call in an order I’m going to ask for John and he is going to get an earful.

Just to give you some idea of what I was dealing with. About 3-weeks in I asked Mat if he could give me some idea when the order could be put together. I explained that I needed to arrange a day off work to drive down. Mat’s reply: “It’ll get done, when it’s done”. I should have asked for the manager right there and then.

Don To The Rescue

I contacted Don Hooper, the owner of Vintage Plumbing, about 2 weeks ago asking about wall brackets to go with my sink legs. I had bought a pair of 1890s, nickel plated sink legs on Ebay to use in the downstairs bathroom. The legs support the front two corners of a marble vanity, and then there should be brackets mounted to the wall to support the other two comers.

I’ve since discovered that the wall brackets have a small post on the top that accepts a hole on the underside of the vanity. This is what holds the vanity to the wall. Once the backsplash is in place, the only way to get the vanity away from the wall without disassembling it, would be to break the marble. The brackets, it seem, play a larger role than just helping to support the marble.

Anyway, I contacted Don 2 weeks ago asking if he had any brackets, or if he knew where I could get some. He emailed me back within minutes and said he makes a reproduction pair and he’d be happy to sell me a set if he still had any. We agreed on a price and I waited for him to contact me telling me he had a pair for me. I never heard back from him.

Even after a few days the pessimist inside me began to doubt I would ever hear from Don again. His site is pretty popular, and being that he is located in LA, I’m sure he gets a lot of local traffic. Also, judging from his site, he mostly deals in high-end stuff for big spenders, and I just figured me and my little request from a couple of brackets might be too mundane. Woa-is-me, right?

On Friday, just a few days ago, I decided I’d better try and find an alternative to Don Hooper. The brackets are roughly 1 X 5 inches, and are a fairly simple design. I started searching for fabricators to make me a pair. I needed to find someone who does non-industrial fabrication. A lot of places I saw on-line were fabricating parts for production machinery and industry prototypes. Not really what I needed.

I eventually found Vulcan Metals in St. Louis, MO. Their site said they would fabricate anything from as small as a pencil holder to as large as hotel railings. Judging from the pictures they do a lot of high-end residential railings, bar BQs, tables, chairs, etc. I shot off an email to one of their estimators, along with a crude drawing of what I needed.

Well, wouldn't you know it, later that day I got an email from Don at Vintage Plumbing saying he just located a pair! I shot off another email to Vulcan saying, “Oops, never mind”. I told Don I’d take them. He gave me two prices. One was for finished but unplated brass, and the other was for finished and nickel plated brass. As it turns out I need to get the waste pipes for the claw foot tub nickel plated, so I said I’d take them unplated and just add them in when I plated the pipes.

I asked him about a good nickel plater and he suggested Astro Chrome & Polishing in Van Nuys, CA. He said he’s been going there for 30 years, and people ship stuff to them all the time. That is exactly what I want to here. He suggested that I request copper pre plating before the nickel plating for better results when having something replated. I don’t understand it exactly, but it seems the copper adheres better to a already polished surface than the nickel does. Works for me.

Next all I need is the marble skirting, oh, and the marble vanity itself. I’m hoping to pick up the vanity in a week or two, and after that I’ll know what size skirting to get. It’ll feel good to have this out of the way.

Is a Vanity in the Hand….

Worth two in the bush, or in this case, several in Murphys, Ca. That is the question I’m grappling with.

It’s a bit convoluted, so please pay attention. There is an antique marble vanity top with sink here in town that I could buy right now. There are 2 issues with it, one minor and one major. The minor issue, or so I’ve been told it’s minor, is some rust stains. They aren’t too bad, but bad enough that I would need to get them off or it would drive me nuts. I’ve been told I can use a poultice of Cream of Tar Tar and Hydrogen Peroxide to leech the stains out of the marble. A good friend told me about this, so I’ll assume it’s true. This is what makes the stains the minor issue.

Still, the stains are a big minor issue, if there is such a thing.

The second issue – the major issue - is the faucet. It doesn’t come with one, but that’s not the issue. This vanity was set up for a mixer faucet as opposed to a separate hot and cold faucet. Normally you would think that was a plus, but in this case it presents a few problems. First, there is a serious lack of Victorian mixer faucets to chose from. In fact, I really only found one. It is at Van Dykes Restorers and the quality is poor. The other problem with this particular faucet is that it does not come in shiny nickel, only in shiny brass and oil rubbed bronze.

You wouldn’t think the issue of the faucet not coming in shiny nickel was a big issue, but it is. I used to say I don’t want to live in a museum when secretly it’s what I’ve desired along. I’ve always liked the unusual and slightly out of style. It is not uncommon in my life for me to take things to their extreme. Or at least close enough to the edge that it’s obvious I went a little too far. In the upstairs bathroom I went with chrome on the faucets and it’s bugged me ever since. The faucets are the only metal things in the room that are not nickel plated and they stick out like a sore thumb. I’m not going to make that mistake again.

I went ahead and bought the faucet from Van Dykes anyway and it came yesterday. The main reason to buy it was to see it in real life, but also to see if it would fit the single hole already drilled in the vanity. It does not. So now I’m faced with needing to drill out the hole. I actually have experience in this so it’s not as daunting as it might have seemed a few months ago. Still, it is one more issue. It is one more thing to worry about, and one more thing that could potentially go wrong.

I bought the faucet in oil rubbed bronze for the primary reason that I know I would never install an oil rubbed bronze faucet in the bathroom. I’m forcing my own hand to either not use it or get it nickel plated. So I started calling around to platers yesterday to see about getting it nickel plated. So far I’ve gotten one bid of $85 and I would have to ship it to them, so really it’s $100. Twice on the phone I had to correct the guy that I wanted nickel plating and not chrome. Visions StoccoHouse type plating problems started going through my head. The more I think about this the less I like it. It’s just more hassle of what will already be a big project.

The other option is to select from one of the marble vanities at DEA Bath. There are a few 2 hole vanities to chose from, and I have a tentative agreement with DEA Bath to take some of my unwanted vintage toilets and sinks in exchange for store credit. In effect, I would be trading toilets for a marble vanity. The issue here is, I have to drive to Murphys, CA, which is about 6 hours, one way. It’s not the end of the world and the drive would do me good.

The other issue is, I would have to pick out the vanity in one day. I usually like to mull these things over, write about it on the blog, change my mind a few times, and then pick something out. This will be a blurry-eyed, over-night, Cannon Ball run to Murphys, CA. ending with me making a crucial decision through a caffeine induced haze. Not ideal conditions.

Then, of course, there is the old “bird in the hand” thing. The vanity that is here in town, is here in town. If I say no to it, and it gets sold, that’s pretty much it. I need to make a decision on the vanity before I start the rough-in on the plumbing. What happens if I get to Murphys, CA and there’s nothing I like. So the question is, do I buy something that I don’t really like just because I can (the vanity here in town), or do I take a chance at what’s behind Door Number 2?

I’ve told the shop here in town that is holding the vanity that I would give them a yes or no within 2 weeks. If someone else is interested in it before 2 weeks is up, they will contact me and I will give them a yes or no immediately.

At this point, I’m leaning towards What’s Behind Door Number 2.

Well, that was easy, but not cheap

I started what I thought would be a long, arduous, and painful process of trying to find a pair of apron wall brackets to go with my new sink legs. As I mentioned yesterday, I bought a pair of 1890s sink legs on EBay for the new bathroom.

The legs support a marble apron at the outside corners of the vanity and there should be a pair of small brackets that mount to the wall to support the opposite end of the apron. These inevitably get tossed or left behind because people either don’t know what they are, or they just loose them. This is the same reason there are a zillion cabinet latches and rim locks out there without the catches. These parts may seem small and insignificant, but they are a crucial part of the item whether it be a cabinet latch, rim lock, or sink leg. It's like having an old car with no window cranks.

Anyway, I’ve been playing around with ideas about how I could mount the sink and apron without the little wall brackets. A few ideas came to mind but they mostly seemed like hack-jobs. Anybody that knows me, knows that I’m normally not opposed hack-jobs and work-arounds. Hell, “The King of Work-Arounds” could be my epitaph. In this case though, this sink will be very heavy when it’s in place. This is not hack-job territory. It should be secured properly to the wall. I don’t want to have a $1000 worth of antique plumbing crashing to the ground because I was too cheap to do it right.

Then last night I thought about the site I had found mentioned in a few of 1902 Victorians musings on dreamy Victorian bathrooms. There is a place in LA (I think) called Vintage Plumbing. This is the place that has the $7,600 marble vanity. I found their site and shot off an email last night shortly after 9:00 at night. About 10 minutes later I heard my laptop ding-a-ling at me indicating new mail had arrived. It was Don from Vintage Plumbing. This guy is hard-core if he’s answering obscure questions on antique plumbing at 9 o’clock at night on a Tuesday.

Sure enough he had what I was looking for, only they weren’t original antiques. Apparently I’m not the only person who has had this problem. I guess it’s so common, or at least common among lunatics who buy antique sink legs, that Don has his own made out of nickel plated cast brass.

The brackets are about 5-inches high and about an inch wide. At $135 for a pair I’m going to need a bullet to bite on when I write that check. Ouch!

Bathroom Jewelry

This is the first of what will be many purchases for the downstairs bathroom over the next few months. In other wards, I’m going to be broke over the next few months as I pour more money in to the house. I keep telling myself it’s an investment, and I guess it is, but it still stings a bit.

Anyway, enough belly-aching and on with the show and tell. These are my latest Ebay treasure. They are a pair of 1890s nickel plated, brass sink legs. First is a picture of the of the legs I bought and then a picture I found on-line of how they are used.





Notice in the picture how the sink legs support a marble apron, which in turn supports the marble vanity. What I don’t have are the nickel/brass wall supports for the apron. If I can’t find any, or make any, I’m thinking I could support the apron in a notch in the wall tile, like one would support floor joists in a brick or stone house.

On the back of the angled parts, at the top of the sink legs, where the marble sits, there are threaded fittings which will hold a bracket so the legs can’t separate from the apron.



On the bottom of the legs, as you can see in the picture above, there is a stud that will go in to a hole in the tile floor. This keeps the leg from being kicked out from under the sink. What all of this means is, I’ve pretty much committed myself to a marble vanity.

I have 2 that are being held for me right now. One is local, at one of the shops. There is an issue with the faucet and some stains, that I won’t go in to now. The other one is at an on-line site. There are issues there as well, that I won’t go in to. Hopefully some things can be resolved in the next week or two and I will have one of the vanities with a sink.

After that I’ll need the marble skirting. Those will be just 3 pieces of marble with no fancy mill work, so I can get that locally from the same place I got the slab for the kitchen. Both of the vanities I’m looking at are the same white Carrara marble, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get a good match.

It’s going to be a challenge to get this all put together without it being crooked or anything. I’m getting nervous about it already, but if it comes out nice, it should look pretty neat. If it doesn’t, I can always sell the house, right?

Oh, and notice the tile in the bathroom picture. This is pretty much what I'm shooting for. I like the white hex with the white square boarder. Those may even be 1X2 rectangles in a staggered running bond on the boarder. It's simple, and plain in a way, but I really like it.

Edit: The Victorian Toilet with the shell motif listed on Ebay that I wrote about in yesterday's post sold for $1,375.00! As I said, too rich for my blood.