Guest Bathroom Redo - Vanity

This is what our guest bathroom looked like when we moved in, minus the storage between the sink and the toilet. It's cute if you have little kids but we don't, so we wanted to make it nicer for when we have guests visit. We live in Tucson but originally from the Chicago area so we usually have a handful of family members visit every year. Now that we have a house, they can actually stay with us! (We're still not sure if that's a good thing. Just kidding...maybe.)

We decided to get rid of the rubber ducky theme and I also wanted to toss the pedestal sink for a vanity with storage and counter space! I'm a horrible hostess because I had my husband's stepdad and his grandfather help me with this project while they were in town for 'vacation'. I told them they needed to earn their room at night. (They both worked and work at Home Depot, so they like doing projects...I'm not THAT horrible.)

First, the water needs to get turned off at the two valves under the sink. Then it's a good idea to cut the grout holding the sink in place. The previous owners painted over the grout so we had a weird line on the wall where paint and grout stuck out but that's easy enough to get rid of. Once the water was shut off, they started up the water to get rid of any residual water that might still be in the line. I also had a bucket ready for when they unhooked the lines so water wouldn't get all over the floor. I missed the part where they actually took the sink off, it happened pretty quick but I do know that the sink and the stand did come apart.

Next, they unscrewed the old mirror and very carefully pulled it off the wall. This looked a little difficult since there was a lot of glue holding the mirror in place, but they managed to take it off without breaking it! No bad luck for us! The vanity that I got came with a mirror, so that's why we took down the mirror.

One discovery we made was the water stopper was being held in place by ZIP TIES! 

One very important thing that I learned was to assemble everything before putting the vanity in the bathroom. That way you can come in at any angle to work on something. We also made a few painful discoveries. The most painful was also a result of us being stupid. I got the vanity at Home Depot and I also got the faucet. I really liked the faucet a lot but I couldn't find the price for it anywhere! I ended up going to customer service and they said it was 99 cents. Apparently, according to my grandfather in law, someone screwed up and didn't pull the old model. He was upset for Home Depot's loss and upset about my awesome gain because he loves Home Depot. Anyway, the woman got a manager and they just gave it to me for free. It was AWESOME!

Now, the stupid mistake that I learned was with this very awesome, very free, chrome faucet. We opened it up out of the package and discovered that the drain stopper was a very ugly gray plastic. I was like, at least it was free, I would have been so mad it I bought such an ugly stopper. So, we went back to home depot and ended up buying a new stopper mechanism. The new stopper did not work with the faucet's mechanics and my father-in-law and I both had a few rage blackouts because of it. Turns out, the free faucet stopper was just wrapped up really well in a plastic casing and it was in fact chrome! We felt so stupid but my husband's grandfather insisted that he knew and just wanted us to learn for ourselves...I'm pretty sure he's full of it.

Once we were ready to install the vanity, we took the countertop/sink off and just put in the wood base. Apparently, I didn't take a picture of it without the top.

Before the top goes on, it's a good idea to check that the vanity actually fits into the space. We discovered that the water valves, when closed allowed for the vanity to sit perfectly flush against the wall. But when the valves get opened they twist out forcing the bottom drawers to never close when the water valve is open, which is always. We ended up having to pull the vanity out from the wall a little bit and guess where it would be the best fit and still close to the wall. Once we figured that out, we put the vanity top on to see how we could rest it, so the gap between it and the wall wasn't horrible. We ended up pushing the counter top back so it could be flush with the front of the vanity and overhang more of the back part so it wouldn't look so awkward. Then we got the faucet and got that into the holes while we could still lift the counter to make it a little easier to maneuver.

Once we had everything where we wanted, we lifted up the counter and caulked it down. Then we checked the hook-ups with the faucet and the water supply. It turned out our hoses were just a little too short, so back to Home Depot to get longer attachment hoses. We then caulked down the faucet and made the attachment. Since we had so many problems as a result of our own stupidity, the order of things when it came to setting up the faucet stopper mechanism is a little fuzzy to me. All I know is, at some point, we secured the faucet stopper casing with plumber's putty...which we originally purchased something for soldering. The whole faucet stopper part was horrible but otherwise, it really was not that difficult to do overall.

Looking back, I think the reason we had so many problems was because we actually had too many people involved and one person would buy one thing that wasn't right and it was a whole mess. If I could do it again, I would just try to do it by myself and call my father-in-law for help, since most of it was common sense and following directions.
Here is the final product: