Bathroom Update, Part II

If you've been keeping up with us, you know that our bathroom originally looked like this when we bought our house (minus the cat food on top of the toilet--we added that classy touch before we gutted the bathroom. And don't worry--Louise's food and bed have since been relocated).

Then, we posted here and here about the work we have done so far to bring our little downstairs 1/2 bath into the 21st century. Since our last bathroom update, we finally worked up the courage to install our new pedestal sink ourselves. We spent about an hour researching pedestal sink installation on YouTube and watched a handful of videos before we felt like we were ready to begin. Each video seemed to include a new or different component of sink installation than another, so I recommend watching a variety if you are looking to install your own sink.

Our pipes are VERY old (as old as the house, so our plumber says), so we cleaned out the main sink pipe first by pulling out all the debris we could with our fingers. Remember, we have been working on this project since August (!!!!!!) so there was a lot of dried up rust looking stuff in our pipe. Ick.

After we cleaned out the pipe, we started laying out and assembling the different components of our sink. Based on our research, we knew we were going to need:

-a sink

-a faucet that would fit our sink (4" centerset)

-a P trap (the curvy part the extends from your sink plumbing)

-an arm that extends from the P trap into the wall

-an extension from the P trap to our faucet part

-hot and cold water supply connectors

-3 covers for where the plumbing enters the wall

-thread tape (plumbing tape that you wrap around your threads to prevent leaks)

-a level to be sure the sink basin and pedestal are level

-bolts to attach the sink basin to the wall

-caulk to finish things off

Here is Stuart laying all of our pieces out and beginning to put things together. I'm not sure if this is true of every sink installation, but the hardest part of the project (as in, it took us like 2 freaking hours to figure it out) was putting the faucet pieces together. We bought our faucet online (you can find it here--we bought ours for $67 on Amazon--there must have been a sale going on at the time because the price has recently increased) and it came with directions, but they just weren't very good.

(Stuart modeling P trap)

Anyways, once we assembled the faucet we attached it to the sink basin, installed the actual plumbing parts (P trap, extension, etc.), and bolted our sink to the wall. I didn't take pictures of those parts because a.) there are loads of tutorials, etc on the Internet already and b.) I think you really need a video to understand the installation process--pictures (as they pertain to plumbing) are definitely not worth a thousand words.

Here are the results:

{note: I promise the sink and toilet are the same color--it's the lighting in the bathroom (and probably my camera) that makes them look like different colors in these pictures!}

We bought our sink from Lowe's and you can find it here. We needed a very tiny sink for this space so we were somewhat limited in our options--this sink ended up working well for us and I think takes up even less space than the sink that was in here before since the basin is round instead of square. The basin is just under 18" wide.

Our faucet is oil rubbed bronze to match the rest of the finishes in the bathroom. We are going to bring in a little gold with the accessories to deemphasize the matchiness (that's a word, right?).

Stuart and I both love the little hot and cold pieces on the faucet--I think they fit well with the style of our 1920s home.

And as you can see we still need to paint the walls above the beadboard. That's next up on our list now that everything is installed and we once again have a fully functioning 1/2 bath (although I just know our guests will miss "washing" their hands with hand sanitizer)!