Laura's Renovation Adventure

The bathrooms in Dad's house were pretty awful. Both had oversized vanities and fiberglass tubs.

We are tiling both (or, rather, the nice people from the flooring store are), and taking out the huge vanities. The one in the hall bath was 82 inches long. That is almost 7 feet long. What on earth possessed anyone to put such a huge cabinet in the bathroom? As nearly as I can tell, the sole purpose of it being that long was to hang the toilet paper on.

Dad gutted the master bath and paid some nice men to make the doorway bigger from the bedroom to the bathroom. He will be hanging a barn door to separate the two rooms.

Finding vanities for the bathrooms has been a challenge. We found some that we liked at Lowe's and Home Depot, but ultimately, those were made from MDF. In a bathroom, especially, we hated to put MDF. We really wanted plywood. But plywood vanities are expensive. We ended up finding vanities in just the right size at the Habitat for Humanity Restore in North Little Rock. Together, they came to 102, but all furniture was discounted 20%, so the for both vanities was just over $80. I'll grant, they need a little work. One was missing a door. Turns out, we had an old cabinet door that fit. One was missing a drawer. My dear husband is planning to just build a drawer to match.

The MDF cabinets that we were looking at were running about $400. One of them lacked a top at that price. This way, Dad can pick out the kind of top he wants and come out a considerable amount of money ahead.