Bathroom Sink and Faucet

One thing I didn't touch in my recent bathroom overhaul was the sink and faucet. I tackled that this weekend!

Above is my sink before. The faucet is one of those lovelies with plastic round knobs. It also is a bright shiny silver (or it was when it was new) and I wanted a satin nickel faucet that would match the knobs on the vanity.

This really is a saga. I first purchased an American Standard faucet at Home Depot, which Mike wasn't a huge fan of from the start, but we decided to try it. It was relatively easy to pull off the old faucet and set the new one in place, but then came the tough part--putting in the new drain.

The silver part of the drain that rests in the sink is supposed to twist off "easily" according to instructions and videos we watched online, but in this case, the pipes were so corroded that that wasn't possible. After many rounds of trying to unscrew it, we ended up using a hack saw to cut the pipe. We finally got the drain out! We're almost done! so we thought.

We installed the new drain, gave each other high fives, and then turned on the faucet to see how it worked. And oh, it leaked. We tried tightening everything that could be, applied some more teflon tape, etc, but to no avail. 

It looked pretty at least?

Lastly, we noticed that the hole in the sink that the drain went in was so corroded that there was no way we could get a tight seal--in other words, it was always going to leak. The sink had to be replaced.

The dirty details

 So then I had this:

Early Sunday morning we made a trip to the Habitat for Humanity Restore to see if they had a suitable replacement sink, and we were in luck! Not only did they have several that were the right size (in many colors! Mike vetoed the pink one), they were all in great shape.

After the ReStore we headed back to Home Depot (I always say its not a project unless it involves at least 2 trips to a hardware store) to exchange the leaky faucet. I ended up getting a Moen facet that is rather similar to the previous faucet. 

The new sink has no corrosion! And its poreclain, not cast iron, so it shouldn't rust quickly. We easily put her in place, and now my bathroom looks GREAT! Next up...replacing the light fixture?

Before:

After:

 

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