No matter where we live we want to change things. We bought this house six months ago because we love it, except for everything about it apparently. So we immediately started making plans to change stuff. I mean some of them were obvious. The bedroom downstairs was awful and I mentioned before I was painting it. I no sooner got that done when we started on another project that wasn't on our immediate to-do list: the main bath. I mean it was OK except for one odd thing. It had a huge vanity with lots of drawers and one little sink in the middle. This didn't make any sense to us, except as a play area for the cats, so we started looking for a better design.

We hadn't been planning on doing anything immediately but then Marsha ran across an ad for Pi Granite (yes, everyone here seems to call it PIG ranite, but it's not). They were having a special charity event. All stone in their yard for $5 / running inch (we're metric up here but that sounds better than $5 / running 2.54cm) and part of the proceeds went to benefit Big Brothers, or Food Shelves, or Parents Without Pancakes or some such group. (Big Brothers and Sisters - mga) I really don't remember or care who it was. The important part was that we did some quick calculations and found that the stone was between half and a quarter of regular price. We selected a stone we liked. Actually we had it down to two and Marsha said "It makes no difference to me so you pick" after we'd placed the order Marsha THEN told me that she really liked the other one better and so it was now 'my' bathroom and I would be responsible for making sure it looked good. Oh joy.

The next question was about the sinks. We knew from the start that we wanted two. The thing was we didn't want to lose any of the drawers. The answer was something we've seen on fancy design shows and in the resorts I used to work in. Vessel sinks on top of the counter. This raised the plumbing up so that it cleared the drawers inside and they also look cool. Now I have to be honest, the frosted glass was not my first choice. I originally wanted clear glass sinks. I'd seen them in the resorts and they are gorgeous. However I realized that at the resorts they have a housekeeping staff that cleans them every single day. We don't have that. While clear crystal sinks can be stunning, clear crystal sinks with toothpaste spit residue in the bottom are not. Hence the frosted glass. Of course with the tall bowl sinks we couldn't use normal bathroom faucets. We had to check several places before we found the tall modern faucets to go with the sinks. I did all the plumbing myself. This meant that where it would have taken the plumber an hour to hook it all up, I got it done in sixteen for about the same money.

Here is the same view of the new bathroom vanity.


You'll notice that we painted the room as well. The old beige just didn't match the new stone. Where most people would have gone with a pink picked up from the potassium-feldspar in the stone I went with the blue-grey from the quartz and amphiboles (Edit: All right, stop showing off your geology degree. Marsha). This brought a richer tone to the whole room. Also notice the backsplash. The piece of stone was just large enough to make our countertop. He wasn't sure if he'd have enough for a backsplash. Fortunately there was and they threw it in for free. The best part though is the cats. The bowl sinks take up so much room there's no place for the cats to walk about. They just don't go up there any more. We like that.

Here's a detail of the sink and faucet. If you rap on the sink with your knuckle it rings like a bell.


This is what the old countertop looked like. (All together now: Ewwwwwwwww)


Here is the new countertop. I have to say we're impressed with their work. Notice how the grain in the stone lines up from the countertop to the backsplash. That's just an example of the care they took to make sure everything was done right.

Marsha: The odd things appearing at the bottom of the above picture is the reflection of the bathroom lights.  I had originally asked Doug why he put garlic cloves on the sink.

And the best part of the whole project was how much we saved on the granite. Apparently you can get stoned cheaper in BC than anywhere else.

Doug & Marsha