Last time we talked about the vanity, I left you here. With some hinges. At the beginning of August. So, go ahead and refresh your memory.

Okie dokie.

So. I can now check ‘design and build bathroom vanity from scratch’ off my bucket list. Or I would, if I had a bucket list. All that remains is to install it, which I kind of thought I’d never be able to actually write.

Since we talked last I’ve installed hardware, spaced and adhered tile, and yesterday I grouted it. Oh, I also installed stoppers for the doors so Nick would stop complaining about how he was going to accidently destroy the doors.

Installing hardware is…pretty self explanatory, so let’s skip that step. I will say, CHECK YOUR WORK. A LOT. Before you actually install any hardware on the front of your very difficult to build doors. Mmmkay.

Laying out Tile: Space Early, Space Often

 When it comes to the point that you’re ready to tile the top of your vanity, or floor, or whatever, really, you’re going to want to spend a lot of time laying out your tiles before you stick them to anything, because you can’t really go back and fix them.

I spent about two hours laying out and triple checking tiles that took me maybe half an hour to glue down.

 *Also, side note, if you want to learn how to tile anything (seriously), head over to DIYDiva; Kit has some truly excellent tutorials with lots of pictures.

I tried to the tiles out in such a way that I used as many full sheets of tile as possible to minimize having to get correct spacing.

We also spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to minimize tile cutting for the areas around the drain holes. We thought using tile nippers would do the job, but apparently they have a tendency to shatter glass tiles like the ones we were using.

Luckily our down the hall neighbor, who is also renovating traded us his wet saw for our cordless reciprocating saw. We wrapped each tile in masking tape several times, and drew the cut lines on the tape so that if the tiles did shatter they wouldn’t blind us. (Always wear safety goggles kids. Safety goggles are cool.) Naturally we also wrapped way more tiles than we needed for each cut to make sure that we had enough good tiles to finish the job. This method actually worked much better than we were expecting; I think we only had one tile actually break wrong.

Getting the space around the sink hole dandy wasn’t as important as the one for the faucet drain because the sink has a massive bottom which would cover any less than perfect tiling. I actually ended up putting in even more tile pieces than I really needed to because I’m anal-retentive.

Making sure the faucet hole was perfect was much more of a task since the base of the faucet covers barely anything, but I think we did okay:

If by ‘okay’, you mean ‘awesome,’ which I do.

Tile Adhesive: Not as fun as it looks

I foolishly thought coating the counter of my vanity in tile adhesive would be really fun, like frosting a cake is fun. But tile adhesive is no butter cream frosting, let me tell you. It is also not edible.

It is like frosting a cake in method though—smack some adhesive on the top and spread it around with a notched trowel.

Once it was covering the vanity in a thin, but not too thin layer, I started laying the tiles down in the same order I did them when I was laying them out. I didn’t push down any of the tiles into the adhesive until all the tiles were laid out and spaced.

I used a lot of tile spacers, spacing as I went.  Nick seems to think that tile spacers were unnecessary for this project, but I disagree. A little extra work is worth it to make sure that the seams are invisible. I also put spacers in some spots where there was no break between tile sheets but where the tiles were a little wonky on the mesh.

When the tiles were all laid out and pushed in by hand I went around with a two by four and a mallet giving everything a bit of a smack to make sure nothing would come loose.

Here it is the next day with the sink and faucet in place for show.

Grout: Not as Scary as Nick’s Dad Makes it Seem

 For this, I basically just followed the instructions on the grout carton and did whatever Nick’s dad told me to when he popped his head into the basement. Like wrapping the vanity in shower curtains? Yeah, I totally wouldn’t have done that.

After mixing up the grout and letting it sit for a few minutes, I dumped the whole bucket on the vanity and spread it around with the grout float.

Nick’s dad was worried that because of the way the corners met that they would be a disaster to grout and that they would fall apart, but I just packed a ton of grout in with my fingers and hoped for the best.

As you can see, they turned out just fine.

 Grouting is super straight forward. The entire process went like this:

Pour grout on counter. Smush around with grout float. Scrape off excess grout with float. Wait. Bother Tesla. Wait.

Wipe grout off with a wet sponge. Wait. Wipe grout off with a wet sponge.

Wait. Admire. (You can do this last part too.)

Our goal is to demolish the bathroom during this long weekend, and hopefully tile everything (once we settle the wall tile argument), so that we can install the vanity next week!

Speaking of which, I have a bathroom to finish dry walling. Peace!

In a non-horrible-apocalyptic way, though that may also be true sooner than I’d like, come to think of it.

Part One: Odds and Ends

I bought special cabinet hinges based on the tutorial at diydiva.net and per Nick’s suggestion decided to inset the hinges so as to not have a weird gap in between the door and the frame.

I went about this with the tools you see in this picture:

Hinge, measuring things, hammer, chisel…

And Orange Juice. Extra pulp added.

We drink a lot of orange juice.

Working with a chisel is a lot like working with a plane, you don’t want to get too carried away in the fun-ness (it is fun!) and take too much off at a time. Chiseling is definitely a less is more process.

I started by deciding where I wanted my hinges, and then traced around them. Pretty easy.

And then it was just tap, tap, tap for a long time.

It was pretty tiring, actually, but I think the outcome was worth it, yes?

You don’t have to make your inset in the exact shape of your hinge, Nick said if he had done this, he would have just made a square in the dimensions of the hinge, because he’s lazy, but I think it looks way nicer this way.

One of my hinges went over one of the spots where I got carried away and jointed things where there should have been not-joints so I plugged that hole with half a dowel.

I later ended up plugging all the holes with wood plugs (I had no idea those even existed!) and now you can’t even tell that I got a little dowel-jig happy.

Here’s the vanity after the entire body is complete before staining and door adding.

To do the bottom I got some trim, cut it to the length of the side and back, attached it with wood screws and glue, and then dropped the bottom in.

Tesla approves.

Part Two: The Human Stain

The process of staining is pretty simple—simple but messy.

For the vanity I decided to go with Rustoleum wood stain in Kona, the darkest color they make. I always have trouble choosing wood stains because I feel like, unlike paint samples which are oh-so-pretty, looking at stains makes me feel like maybe I should just paint the damn thing instead.

Staining wood makes me nervous because you can never really tell how it’s going to come out, and that’s a long, arduous, noxious fume filled process to get wrong.

Luckily, it did not turn out wrong.

I sanded a lot, and then began liberally applying stain going with the grain, and wiping it off.

Here’s the first door after a coat of stain.

Looks like…a brown door. Neat.

I used a foam brush for staining, because then you don’t leave brush strokes, and they’re disposable, which is a huge plus.

Throughout the process I was a little bit worried because in the basement the stain looked black, and while, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to the vanity, it wasn’t really the look I was going for, but every so often, the little bit of natural light would hit the vanity just right and sooth my worried soul.

 We put Tesla outside, because he started barking a lot; I think the fumes were bothering his doggie nose. This is what he thought about the whole process:

‘Booooring.’

The worst part was doing the inside, partly because it was very hard not to be lazy, as very few people (except maybe Nick’s dad) will be sticking their heads inside the vanity to inspect my handiwork. I was also worried about bumping things and messing up the stain job on more important parts of the vanity for the sake of the interior. And did I mention the fumes? Sheesh. I had a nice headache at the end of the day.

 At the end of the day, my hands also looked like this:

Then it was on to the poly!

Here’s the difference between the doors after one has a single coat of poly. Pretty crazy, huh? I apologize for the terrible phone pictures, but my camera was temporarily lost at the bottom of a climbing bag.

 A couple of coats of poly later:

 I swear I wasn’t trying to pose Tesla, but he would. Not. Move. All he wanted to do this day was sit on me wherever was most inconvenient while I installed hardware.

I also think the sink is going to go more in the corner, so it looks less plunked down there and that will also give us more useable counter space.

Applying poly is like applying stain, but more time consuming, and it’s good to be a perfectionist.

I applied three very thin coats (the recommended number) of Rustoleum Polyurethane with a nice synthetic brush and a cheap foam brush depending on what worked best at a given moment and it turned out great. Not only does poly make everything shiny, but it protects your work from all sorts of things like toothpaste and clumsy boyfriends!

With the Rustoleum poly I didn’t need to sand in between coats either, which was great, and made for this conversation:

Nick’s Dad: Did you sand in between coats?

Me: No?

Nick’s Dad: (chortle) Well your poly’s going to peel off then!

Nick: How long will that take? Five years?

Nick’s Dad: I don’t know, maybe, ha!

Me: But it says here, do not sand in between coats!

Nick’s Dad: … Well whaddaya know!

Part Three: Cutting Counters, not Corners

When it came to cutting the MDF for the counters I wanted to make sure that I didn’t have to cut any tiles (except for drain holes etc.) because I’m pretty lazy, and I’d rather have beautiful whole tiles everywhere.

This was pretty simple for measuring the length and width, but I ran into a slight problem with the height of the counter.

The two pieces of MDF together make for a counter of 1.5”, but two full tiles with room for grout is 2”

Nick and I brainstormed a bit, considering even getting a sheet of .5” MDF, but then decided on the following approach:

Sorry for the wonky camera angles, it’s hard to take photographs while holding up tile samples.

But basically there will be a nice border around the whole vanity top, made of tile edges, which are nice themselves and unseen everywhere else. From the front you’ll just see the full tiles on the counter depth. And yes, it’s a simple solution, and it took us a good while to figure out. No mocking.

And here’s what the whole thing should more or less look like when the top is all done!

Later today I should be putting on handles and drilling holes for drains, but after that it will be a bit of a wait to actually lay the tile due to life being all…life-y, so hang tight!

Part One: Karma

I, like the foolish, foolish beast I am, decided that for my first legitimate woodworking project, I would make doors that were not one piece of wood (that would have been too simple/logical, obviously) but seven.  Seven I tell you!

I give you this picture, to solve like one of those puzzles in Cricket magazine. What’s horribly, horribly wrong in this picture?

Ding, Ding, Ding!

Those two pieces of wood, jointed so nicely to the inner front of the cabinet? Yeah, those are the outsides of the DOORS. They’re not supposed to be jointed to anything. They’re supposed to swing, like doors do. Sigh. Perfect example of me getting ahead of myself.

I was off to a great start.

I began the scary process of jointing the doors together after lots of measuring. Scary because the doors are lots of little pieces that need to fit together Goldilocks style (juuuust right) and oh, yeah, they’re the most visible part of the vanity.

Also, for the plywood insets on the doors I was using ½” plywood instead of ¾”, and drilling ¼” holes for the dowels.

There’s a fun math problem for you! How much wiggle room did that leave me? Right, none.

Surprisingly, the dry fit for the frame of door number one went like this:

And then the dry fit for the whole door went like this:

And ended up like this:

And then I did this:

‘I AM A GOOOLDEN GOD! LOOK ON MY WOODWORKS YE MIGHTY AND DESPAAAAAIIIRRRR!’

Which explains why I remade the second door about eight times.

Hubris.

AmIright?

So the ease with which the first door went together was reversed, and then quadrupled or whatever Karma does.

I re-cut the top inset for the second door at least four times, and that is no exaggeration. I bought a lot of new 1x2s which then got cut down into tiny pieces and then discarded. (Actually, I slammed together a couple of the tiny pieces to make a spice rack, but you get the point.)

A lot of the problem was using a regular ole’ circular saw for something that required lots of precision.

Here is door number 2 partway through attempt number one. Even the photo is sad:

At first I thought that sanding would fix all my problems. But it didn’t. It just got sawdust everywhere.

But, eventually, they worked. And both the doors were just a teensy bit too tall to fit into the vanity.

“No problem,” said Nick, “you can just fix that using the belt sander.”

Um. No.

But because I didn’t even know what a belt sander was at the time, what I really said was:

“Great!”

Part Two: The Belt Sander

 I don’t have pictures of this part because I was too busy swearing and crying to bother with them. Enjoy my dramatic re-enactment.

We don’t have a belt sander in our tiny apartment, so we took the doors to Nick’s parents house where all the tools live.

Nick’s father, is like Nick, an engineer, and thus very particular about everything. He is also a very good wood worker, and thus snickered a lot and gave lots of obvious advice that I wasn’t aware of after I had managed to butcher everything.

So, Nick’s father set us up with every tool we could possibly want for sanding ever and then left us in the basement because he had better things to do than watch us create a mockery of all things woodwork.

I picked up the belt sander.

Me: Psst. Nick. How do I turn this thing on?

Nick pushes a button.

If my doors could have spurted ketchup blood, they would have. You see, gentle readers, belt sanders are for large expanses of flat surface, not a span of wood ¾ of an inch thick that need the lightest of touches. As I soon learned.

The belt sander bucked, it sputtered, it sanded. It was really f***ing heavy.

When I was done, the top of door number 2 looked like an abstract rendering of waves at sea, which is to say, wavy. Not anything close to straight.

Thus commenced the swearing and being not very nice to Nick who is always very nice and the crying and the blaming him for things that were not his fault (though the belt sander was his idea).

Nick tried to suggest helpful ideas most of which involved adding a small strip of wood somewhere.

My solution was to say ‘F*** it’ and drink box wine. Guess whose solution worked best?

That’s right, MINE.

After box wine (and scallops) we went back down to the basement with Nick’s father, at which point I asked for help and he said ‘why would you use a belt sander on this? This is what a plane is for.’

And I thought you knew this was the plan, so why didn’t you tell me two hours ago?*

Then he put forth some not very helpful ideas, most of which involved adding a small strip of wood somewhere. Nick suggested we just use the radial saw on the top of both doors to even them out, which turned out to be the perfect suggestion and I didn’t even have to put any small strips of wood anywhere because the doors were suddenly the perfect height to fit in the vanity.

The moral of this story? Nick is a hero, and a very nice boy. Man.

*This is a theme with doing things with Nick’s father around. He tells us something very helpful, after the fact when it is no longer helpful, and then Nick says ‘WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY THAT TWO HOURS AGO WHEN WE TOLD YOU WHAT WE WERE DOING???????’

Part Three: The Plane

You know the horrible story I just told about the belt sander? You know, the one with all the swearing and the wavy wood? And how I was supposed to use a plane for something like that? Well…

The last thing I needed to do before throwing the doors out a window in frustration sanding and finishing the doors, was to take a little bit off the inner side of door number one, which I had made just the slightest bit wider than door number two.

For this I used a plane. It worked beautifully. I made millions of little curlicues of wood. And then I had this:

And this:

The. End.

Disclaimer: This isn’t meant to be a tutorial on how to build a vanity, if you want that, I suggest you hit up DIY Diva, because it’s awesome and I used it as a guide on my own vanity spirit quest.

Disclaimer two: So, reading this, I mostly talk about the parts where I messed up. Which makes me sound like an idiot. But those are the interesting parts, and the most helpful I think. If I don’t talk about something, chances are it went okay.

The first steps, naturally, were measuring and cutting. And praying. (Nick helped a ton with cutting, hence I say ‘we’ for this section) Because we don’t own anything fancy like a table saw, it was basically line up the circular saw and go. For the first couple cuts we used a metal T-Square as a stop, but man, that is a lot of T-Square clamping, so we went back to the praying method. It mostly worked, but I did end up buying a lot of extra 1x2s for the front because we kept messing them up the slightest amount. And by ‘we’ I mean I did that on the one day I was really impatient and tried to use the saw alone.

I took Kitliz’s advice after doing some research of my own on joining methods, and went with dowel jointing with the aid of a dowel jig. It worked pretty great for the most part.

I started with the back:

Measuring.

Drilling. 

Dry fitting and praying. I did this step a lot.

After a good dry fit (there was always much jiggling of wood and swearing during this step) I glued everything and let it dry. Thank god I have so many books, yes?

jiggling in progress

It turns out I was a little hasty in attaching the back legs to the back right away. Why? Because they also needed to attach to the sides. Dur. I did the whole jumping the gun a lot in the project, but mostly it wasn’t due to impatience, but not being able to see quite as many steps into the future as I needed to.

not so fast young whippersnapper.

A lot of it went like this:

‘Saweeet! ‘X’ part is done! … Now what?’

Anyway, having already glued the back didn’t make doing the sides impossible, just more difficult, but as you can see, I managed it:

mmmm dowel jig I love you.

After that I mostly went for the dry-fit and stop there until I was absolutely certain that things were going right.

I came up with the pretty genius (okay, maybe that’s just me) idea of using the T-Square to make sure everything was all aligned as it dried, and it worked super, super well.

I concluded stage one (sides and back, aka the easy part) with a celebratory milkshake. Which I then sprayed everywhere, due to laughing while drinking.

At least this time I wasn’t hospitalized.