So, this is one of the things I love about shopping at the Habitat Re-store (which is the retail arm of Habitat for Humanity’s building salvage operation): you just have to go with what they’ve got. And sometimes what they’ve got is really weird, and you never would have picked it out of a catalog, but somehow it’s perfect. That’s my new light fixture, which I got for $20, thank you very much (along with all my cabinet pulls for $4). I would never in a million years have thought to want it in the powder room, and objectively it’s extremely 60s grandma. But when I was browsing the light fixture selection, I saw it, and I thought: Hey, why not? It’s the right shade of antique brass. And every powder room needs a little bit of bling. So, I got it, and I love it installed. It’s giving bonfire in the birch woods vibes IMHO.
Installing it went as smoothly as it could have. I knew I was going to have to drill the stud to get the romex passed over to that side, but fortunately there was enough length in the wiring to pass it through to the new fixture location, and it only took one hole to accomplish the fishing. I’ve patched the holes and will texture tomorrow and paint the following day, and the walls will be finished!
Grouting went fine. I realized as I started that I should have done 1/8” joints rather than 1/4”: they look more refined in a smaller space like a powder room. I also piped in the grout with a pastry bag to keep things cleaner, since it was such a small room and the tile-to-joint ratio was enormous—I figured it would save me time mopping grout off the tiles. And it did clean up beautifully, but it still took me over 1.5 hours to grout; so, I’m not sure it was more efficient the way I did it. But I love the light grout with the light tile. I’ll seal that off once it’s cured—probably tomorrow night.
The countertop guy came and measured today and took my cleaned-up sink to test with the new countertop—took him all of 10 minutes; they’ll be back on Friday to install, and he said I could throw the faucet on the sink while they were installing the countertop; that way when they mounted the sink in place, the faucet would already be on there, and I wouldn’t have to fish around upside down in the cabinet to install it later—it’ll save me a lot of time and headache, so I’m glad I asked about it. If I can throw the supply lines on there as well, that will make things even easier; I’ll ask the guys on Friday if that’s OK.
Tomorrow won’t look like much—we’re headed into the home stretch, but I’ll post the results: should be second coat of mud and texture on the wall patches plus painting the front of the vanity and the door fronts; I’ll probably seal the grout, too. They make these nifty little bottles of sealant with brush applicators, so that should go pretty quickly.
The Rookery 