Tuesday, October 25, 2011

I'm Not Going to be a Purist About This

Here's one of the bathrooms in my midcentury house.  It's got cool, old tile on the floor and walls, and a genu-wine Universal Rundle peach-colored one-piece toilet to go with the peach and brown vanity.  It used to have brown walls and a brown ceiling until I took care of that with primer.

In true fashion, the toilet didn't work when I bought the house, and I had a bear of a time finding parts to fix it.  So now, I'm scared to use the toilet because I'm worried it might break again and parts for this puppy are hard to come by!  How useful, exactly, is a bathroom that I'm afraid to use?

That's why I made the hard decision to find this toilet a new home, and go the Home Depot route for a replacement.  That and the vanity.  I'm all for peach, so my plan is to leave the bathtub exactly the way it is.  (Plus, I don't want to touch any of this wonderful midcentury tile if I can help it!)  I might possibly replace only the vanity cabinet and re-use the sink, but the jury is out on that so far.

I'm thinking of something like this, ... or this, or this. 
And lights that look like this. Or maybe this (both from EBay).

The pictures show that over the years the sink has aged to a different color, more pink-y, than the apricot-colored toilet and the more brown-y, tan-y tub.  I've waffled on the order of the steps
Paint the vanity first, to see what color I'm looking for?  Or replace the toilet first to see how the room looks with a lighter toilet, ... which might change my vanity choice?  I'm 100% sure that the toilet is going bye-bye - so I think that's what I'll do first.  (Plus, I should take up the current vanity and make sure the tile underneath is in good shape before buying something newer!)  I'm about 75% sure that a smaller sink will look better (this one is 30 inches wide on a 27 inch cabinet).  Twenty-four inches will look much better, I think.
I also think that I can do this plumbing job myself, so replacing this stuff could (ideally) be a weekend project.

I have to keep reminding myself that I bought a project house on purpose, because I like this kind of work.  Yeah.  I like this. Yeah.