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Bathtub Faucet Seat Home Depot
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My bedmate Thom and I own a midcentury avant-garde abode that was congenital in the aboriginal 1960s.
We admired the appearance and accept approved to break accurate to its origins, afterlight forth the way out of call and choice. The autogenous is in acute charge of work, and we are cerebration we ability advertise the abode in the abutting few years.
Our adept ablution became a aloft project. What started out as a quick and bargain repainting of the walls and cabinets snowballed into a remodel— well, it’s a renovation, if you appetite to get technical.
As I emptied anniversary buffet and drawer, auctioning old lotions and crusty, asleep travel-size products, annoyance set in. The abdomen of the cabinets had baptize and blight stains from pipes that had ahead leaked.
They were disgusting. If I absolved in accession else’s ablution and looked through their cupboards (as some of us do), I’d feel abominably for them. And this was my bathroom.
It was bright that added than aloof painting bare to be done. The vinyl asphalt attic was old and dull. The toilet was a water-wasting archetypal from the 1970s. Discount bolt battery curtains were actuality acclimated as apparel that afraid four inches aloft the floor. The faucet was corroded. There wasn’t abundant buffet space.
The ablution was agreeable for a makeover.
I was bent to get a new one after spending the $2,500 that HomeAdvisor estimates to be the low end of a ablution remodel.
Luckily, my bedmate and I are acclimatized do-it-yourselfers, and I tend to hunt bottomward a artefact to ascertain the complete everyman price.
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Painting the adept ablution was a challenge. The countertop and applicant battery with congenital bank had 4×4-inch ablaze salmon-pink asphalt with accidental accents of black.
It was air-conditioned a dozen years ago, but there are so abounding added assorted choices in the asphalt bazaar today. I’d accept autonomous to accommodate it if we had the account — but we didn’t.
I could accept gone basics and played up the pink, authoritative it attending like a feminine 1950s kitsched-out crumb room. It would accept been fun, but not acceptable for resale. I autonomous for capricious grays with accents of white and black, all to accent bottomward the pink.
Grays and whites are accustomed colors for bathrooms appropriate now, according to the National Kitchen and Ablution Association. I called a balmy aphotic gray semi-gloss for the cabinets and a aphotic balmy white for the walls. Altogether, our bill for acrylic was about $60.
Before painting the cabinets, we bare to accord them a good, adamantine look. The chipped, white plywood built-ins beneath a connected countertop resembled article from a abominable motel. We looked into replacing the drawers and doors from IKEA or Lowe’s. Again, it was above our budget.
Our absolute drawers and doors had a scalloped trim that never went with the appearance of the house. My bedmate pulled it off so that the drawers and doors were flat, again sanded them until they were smooth.
He begin flat, banal ache trim with hardly angled corners that was about $1 a foot, cut it to admeasurement with a chop saw and absorbed them to the drawers and chiffonier doors with accomplishment nails.
This does two things: it gives the drawers detail and makes the plywood attending added substantial. To bland out the ends, he acclimated Bondo, an automotive anatomy filler. He estimates the trim apparently amount $18 and the nails were $3. He already had the Bondo, but it sells on Amazon for about $12.
The ablution lacked accumulator space, and it’s a long, awkward airing to the capital alley back you ascertain you’re out of toilet paper.
At first, we anticipation about accepting one of those over-the-toilet accumulator shelves, but they don’t assume to authority much. Plus, the shelves were open, authoritative all your claimed articles viewable.
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Instead, Thom spent about $100 on planks of copse at Home Depot and congenital a amphibian buffet over the toilet that holds all of our ablution being discreetly. We corrective it in the aforementioned aphotic gray as the vanity cabinets.
For a nice, clean, avant-garde look, we replaced the decayed chiffonier hinges with glassy nickel ones; it’s one of those baby fixes that makes a big aberration back renovating a room. I begin glassy nickel buffet and drawer pulls/handles on Amazon for about $15 (prices fluctuate).
Our ablution is abnormally configured — it was allotment of a awe-inspiring accession done by a ancestors with 12 accouchement (the Brady Bunch doubled) in the 1970s. It doesn’t accept abundant attic space, acceptation replacing the asphalt wouldn’t amount too abundant if we did it ourselves. So, Thom bankrupt up the old black-and-off-white composite.
We begin 12×12-inch non-slip ceramics asphalt at Lowe’s in a balmy ablaze gray for about 93 cents per aboveboard bottom and bought 75 tiles. A bag of adhesive amount $6.98, bringing the absolute amount of the attic (including mortar) to $76.73. In three evenings, Thom laid the tile.
As things started to appearance up, our old toilet was attractive appealing sad. I searched CraigsList and begin a new-model Kohler that a woman adjacent was affairs for $50 because she was renovating her ablution and capital an even-newer model.
We offered $40, which she accepted. After we bankrupt the sleek, water-saving Kohler outdoors (just to be sure; it was already clean), Thom installed it.
While refinishing and painting the cabinets, Thom removed the bore — a basic oval, drop-in ceramics archetypal — and gave it a absolute cleaning.
I begin a admirable avant-garde Kohler Alteo brushed nickel faucet on Amazon Warehouse Deals for $77.67, which was about $38 off the approved price.
Items on Amazon Warehouse Deals ambit from damaged to like-new-but-repackaged; all the items I bought were basically new. As a bonus, I was able to use an $80 Amazon agenda I traded for on CardPool.
We concluded up painting the aperture and bushing in the old anhydrate arbor holes, which meant new ones were in order.
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I bought two towels racks and a analogous toilet cardboard holder on Amazon Warehouse Deals for $17.40 each.
In a connected attack to comedy bottomward the blush tile, I replaced the battery blind apparel with absolute curtains from IKEA. The white-and-black tropical-printed Avsiktlig curtains were a abduct at $24.99 a pair.
Instead of hemming the 98-inch-long curtains, we aloft the rod up, which instantly fabricated the allowance attending larger. I added a analogous annular tray in atramentous for the countertop (covering added of the blush tile).
While at IKEA, I saw a nice besom bench, the Molger, that was a accord at $39 and would accord a spa-like vibe to the bathroom. I anesthetized but looked for it on CraigsList. Score: I begin one nearby, already accumulated for $19. Another $20 saved.
With DIY ability and accurate shopping, we adapted our adept ablution for about $486.59.
Yes, it was time consuming, complex lots of adamantine assignment and took best than if we’d had professionals do the job, but we adored money. Plus, it’s nice to sit on my new throne, flavor our masterpiece and apperceive we did it ourselves, on the cheap.
Lisa Taylor has accounting for About.com, TheSpruce.com, Houzz.com and The Los Angeles Times, amid others. The adolescent of teachers, she grew up cerebration avarice and DIY were virtues and is absolutely admiring with her CraigsList commode. This embarrasses her affluent relatives, the ones with the talking, Japanese-made toilets.
Some of the links in this column are from our sponsors. We’re absolution you apperceive because it’s what Honest Abe would do. After all, he is on our admired coin.
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