pour améliorer: The Icing on the Cake

Let's just get this bathroom finished already!!!

It feels like this downstairs renovation has been dragging on forever (probably because it has), but we're tantalisingly close to the finish line!

After we showed off our carpenter-ing prowess making a bookshelf that IKEA would be proud of for the end of our downstairs bath tub (see here)...

We were keen to call this bathroom a done deal.

First things first, finishing up our vanity cabinet. Our beautiful, spray-painted glossy black vanity cabinet.

With a drawer missing and no drawer handles.

The drawer was missing because the S-trap plumbing for the bowl sink was taking up its space, so it could only close about half way. My original plan had been to simply cut off the drawer and just glue its front to the cabinet, so it wouldn't be open-able.

But we quickly realised that the plumbing only took up half of the available space, so we could shorten the drawer and at least then still have it useable.

So that the drawer was still nice and stable though, we didn't want to cut off its bottom (or all of its back), so we just cut a little piece of scrap plywood to size and screwed it into the drawer. Then we cut out a little chunk of the back board so it fit around the pipe, and we had a fully functioning (although shallow) drawer in no time.

Meanwhile, handle time!

We chose some really simple little chrome pull handles for each of the drawers. Tom and I actually nearly came to blows over them in the middle of Bunnings. He hated them, I thought they'd be perfect. I think they were only just over $1.00 each, and they're actually designed as cheap pulls for doors or cupboards, not for fancy pieces of furniture. They didn't even get their own little display like all of the other drawer handles and knobs. But I thought they'd work perfectly.

I'll let you decide who you want to side with.

No I won't. I'm not that big a person. Clearly I was right. Tom very grumpily allowed me to buy them (still convinced that they were awful), and fitted them to the drawers. And now he agrees that they're perfect. Aah it's lovely being right all the time!

So that's the vanity done. Now for the blank wall above it!

As you may recall, the vanity cabinet (that we then got spray-painted) was a dresser with a mirror in a former life.

The timber frame of the mirror was a bit cracked in places, so we glued it up with some super glue and then I went nuts with the wood putty to try and smooth over the cracks.

After letting it dry overnight, I sanded it back, and although it might not look it, the end result was nice and smooth as you ran your finger over it.

So can you guess what I was going to do next? Do you think it might involve black paint?

Yeah, you know me too well.

But first was the fun part. Taping up the mirror so it didn't get paint on it.

I think this was the moment when I stopped admiring the mirror's unique curves.

Just as an aside, I went to this effort to tape up the mirror rather than simply removing it from the frame because we weren't entirely sure that the frame was structurally sound enough to be deprived of the mirror. As a whole package, it was sturdy. Without? We didn't want to go down that road.

So, tape and newspaper it was. Then, I perched the mirror on top of a crate surrounded by drop sheets...

And sprayed to my heart's content. First undercoat...

And then a few very thin coats of glossy black spray paint later...

I loved it already. I let it sit undisturbed for a few days, and then carefully peeled the tape away to expose the mirror again. I used a little razor blade to tidy any small patches where paint had seeped around any edges, and you'd never know it wasn't black to begin with!

So then my wonderfully strong husband held it up for me in the bathroom while I ummed and aahed over how high above the taps it should be...

And then we had to decide how to fix it to the wall. Normally bathroom mirrors are just glued to the wall, but we didn't want to trust the old backing board of the mirror too much. We had visions of it one day separating from the frame and the glass crashing down over our beautiful vanity.

So, we came up with a genius idea. We drilled two holes roughly in line with where the bottom of the mirror would go, and put two little screws in them.

Then we drilled two little corresponding as-shallow-as-possible holes in the back of the bottom section of the mirror frame...

And then we very carefully lined up the little mirror holes over our screws in the wall, and it rested on them, meaning that the screws were only visible if you were crouching on the floor looking up.

Of course that only took care of the bottom of the mirror and gravity. We still needed to prevent the top of the mirror from sliding forward and bringing it all crashing to the ground.

We eventually decided that our best option would be to drill one hole directly through the centre of the top of the mirror's frame, so we could put one screw into the wall there to hold it tightly.

Never say I can't multi-task!

So then we were left with one gaping hole in the wall where the top of the mirror would go (it's the black dot just to the left of the light reflection on the wall in this photo), and the two little screws above the taps.

Since we had to drill through the tile and we wanted to make sure our top screw would really grip the wall and stop the mirror from falling forwards (and unfortunately there wasn't a conveniently located wall stud right where we needed it), we used one of these clippy screws (that's the official name, for sure). Its two little metal wings fold inwards as you push the screw through the hole, and then spring out on the other side, holding it snugly to the wall.