Tuesday, February 8, 2011

At the End of the Day You're another Day Older


It's been a productive day one. All the tile came off the wall, the sink is out, and most of the fixtures are purchased. Tomorrow is more demo and more hauling. The dumpster is set to appear at 9am. Our building is taking bets on how long it will take the neighbors to fill it to the brim with their own stuff.

I originally misordered the first tub so trooped over to Park Slope Plumbing to fix my mistake and see what else I could order. I worked with Bob Gomez and he was pretty amazing, knew the inventory really well and actually gave me his opinion. The biggest challenge was the tub as we wanted a deep soaker that will fit in a small space and be acrylic. We had a tough time finding something that maintained the size and wasn't over our budget.



Bob found this guy from Fine Fixture at the same price as the original Kohler Archer that we originally chose. It's the only tub they make and is comes in very limited sizes (I think small and big).

Next we moved on to the vanity. (You have to imagine that the husband and I are emailing, sending pictures, and talking on the phone and Bob is patiently waiting). We both liked the metal console but most of what we found was extremely expensive. The sink we both fell in love with was "at least $7,000". We told him we wanted a metal console but "less old lady" and he immediately pulled this one from Empire Industries. I'm not sure how it escaped my googling but I didn't find it online. (The website is empire-industries.com if anyone is looking) We loved this one in the cheaper white china top and it came in our size. No brainer. And the cheapest one that we liked. Huzzah!



By the way, here's what an "at least $7K" sink looks like. Swooooon! It's Kallista's ONE.



You may notice that I'm not giving specifics on price. It just makes me squicky to talk about money. I'll say that Bob gave us really good prices which I think we a reflection of their usual business practices, the fact that we bought everything together, and dropped our contractors name a lot. The best part of Bob was that we went through the show room and I pointed out things that I liked and he pointed out things that worked with what we had chosen all together. When I balked at price he found similar things at lower price points and helped me decide what was worth spending money on. For example, everyone will see the sink faucet but not the tub faucet. Or the fact that the lines of the spout were really lovely on the more expensive version, but a tub spout isn't expensive so spend the $50 to get what you want.

Ah, I'll show you those:


Sink Faucet by Danze


Tub spout by Groeh


Shower Handle by Danze

We need to get accessories and a toilet but the accessories can wait and we can't do anything until the floor comes up and a plumber looks at the dreaded toilet. We didn't find anything terribly exciting behind the walls other than things being overdone in some areas and underdone in others. There was something that looked like fire damage but it was so rotted out with water that it was hard to tell. Surprise!

I also cleaned out a lot of basement. I have to admit that throwing out other people's unwanted stuff is cathartic.

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