Recycle Rehab

I had to pull the sink vanity out of the bathroom in order to do the caulking job I spoke of in the last post.  So I took the opportunity to address some of the issues with that.

I got the sink from a salvage company.  I was told that it's a cast-off from a renovation of the Park Plaza hotel in Boston. I think what drew me most to the sink was the cute little soap dish on a pedestal. Originally the sink itself was on a pedestal but that was lost somewhere between the Park Plaza in Boston and the salvage company in White River Junction Vermont.  So I have a pedestal soap dish on sink with no pedestal.  Welcome to the world of recycled building supplies.

When it came time to put the sink to use, I looked around some for an appropriate pedestal replacement but couldn't find one.  Then I remembered that I had an old cabinet for a treadle sewing machine that we used to use to hide our little TV.  I decided that it would make for a good sink vanity if I cut a larger hole in the top and a couple of holes in the back for the plumbing.

I did that some months ago and applied several coats of polyurethane to protect it from the moisture in the bathroom.  The cabinet is a bit a shabby but it has charm.  It worked OK as sink vanity.

The were a couple problems with it beyond its shabbiness though.  The door was made to open in a way that made it easy to work the sewing machine's treadle but this aspect didn't function well in our bathroom as you can see by the picture.  The door hit the tub before it could be opened all the way.  Also, I found that my size 11 feet would always bang up against the front of the cabinet whenever I tried to get close to the sink.

I decided I would try to fix the door issue by moving the hinge to where it is usually on a cabinet. This meant carefully taking apart the door, using part of it to reconstruct the left-hand side of the cabinet, and then installing hinges at the corner.

That all went pretty well.  I was able to screw the pieces together in a way that keeps the screws hidden, and I found hinges that fit well on the narrow side piece.  I also added a little magnetic door catch to keep the door closed.

Then I decided to build a plinth for the base of the cabinet.  This raised the cabinet a few inches and provided a place for my toes when I belly up to the sink.

The finished product is still far from perfect, but it's definitely one of kind.