From the moment I first walked into the master bath, I knew the whole vanity with the dark mauve granite had to go. Then there was the 48"x 36" dual sided, all mirrored medicine cabinet... that had to go too. In investigating further, I discovered that behind the giant, mirrored, medicine cabinet there were, what appeared to be, the original tiles.
I took all the drawers out of the vanity and opened the cabinets under the dual sinks to discover that sure enough, the original tiles were still there, but what condition were they in? Were they salvageable? And, did I really want to tear out all this stuff which could then lead to having to re-tile the entire bathroom and having to file for divorce? I could try to save as many as I could and then replicate/reproduce the original tile design for the decorative tiles that got destroyed, but that was going to prove to be costly... $300 alone to draw up a design plus $20+ per tile. The answer was ultimately yes, I'll risk it and OH BOY I HOPE I'M NOT GOING TO BE SORRY I DID THIS but there was no way that monster vanity was staying in my bathroom.
We started the demo last week and I was there during the whole process making sure that my contractor wasn't in too much of a hurry to destroy. I have noticed lately that men love to pick up a hammer and saw and start banging and cutting.
Slowly he took the vanity apart... making sure that as he pulled it off the wall, it wouldn't take the tile off or break the tile in the process.
It went remarkably well with the exception of a few of the decorative tiles that had what appeared to be some sort of concrete like adhesive on them and some of the solid colored tile had to be broken to accommodate the new pipes being put in for the pedestal sink. I was confident I could find something very similar to replace those solid colored tiles, but the decorative ones had me nervous.
Here in San Jose, CA there is an amazing store called FireClay. Here they have hundreds of thousands of tiles. Some are old, some are new, some are imported, but most are made on site and they are eco-friendly in how they produce their products. Their handmade tiles are made up of recycled and sustainable materials. This was right up my alley, so I went down there to see if I could find a solid tile that would match the tiles we had to break and to see if they knew how to get the goop (whatever it was) off my decorative tile.
www.fireclaytile.com/
In their boneyard (kind of like the island of misfit toys, but for tiles) I found almost an exact match to my original solid tile and best of all, I got 24 tiles (many more than I needed) for $5.00. Yes... five bucks. And, long story short... the adhesive that was used to adhere the large piece of offensive, dark mauve granite back splash, was removed with Goof Off... this once again proving that my father is a wise man. Some of his sage advice includes: "You can paint that." and "Nothing that a little duct tape can't fix." and now my all time favorite "Goof off will clean that stuff right off."
www.goofoffstainremover.com/
Next steps: re-tiling the spaces left by the broken tiles and putting in the sink. Ordering a new medicine cabinet and picking out vintage or handcrafted looking storage and getting new lighting put in. I also might as well resurface the mauve bathtub given that our 4.5' tub is rare and hard to find, I officially hate the color mauve and taking the existing tub out would mean re-tiling the floor and definite divorce proceedings.
I got out of this potential disaster pretty cleanly, why tempt the Gods of Home Restoration if it isn't truly necessary?
