It's Never Easy

The bathroom renovation has consumed us the past few days. I'm getting back into the routine of late night runs to Home Depot to visit old familiar faces that assisted me during our kitchen renovation. There have been some plumbing hurdles but so far things are on track...slow, but on track. There have been some intense moments, like when we carried the 250lb. vanity upstairs. Before you think badly of my husband for making me move cabinets while I'm 30 weeks pregnant, I insisted I could help and begged him to let me try. We rigged some straps to help me lift on the up side and he pushed from the bottom. It wasn't pretty, but we eventually go it upstairs. Did I mention we have to eventually get another one upstairs.
Pushing the box upstairs, on his back...poor guy was ready and I stopped to grab the camera while he waited.
The vanity upstairs, awaiting it's new home.

The biggest issue caught us off guard. We purchased new vanities and bought separate vanity tops. We were surprised to come home and find the two granite counter tops to be very different colors despite the fact that they are supposed to be the exact same product. The display counter, called "beige" was just that, beige! However the majority of the "beige" counters have really been grayish/pink unlike the sample in the store. Complicating things is that we also have to buy 4 side splashes to go along the wall on either side of the counter...those have been different colors, too.

The difference was more then obvious even to someone that doesn't care about details. The picture below is the counter we didn't like with the side splash on top that we thought we were purchasing.
We went back to Home Depot and discovered that our case wasn't an isolated situation. They say it is the manufacturer's fault and they take the blame and they are trying to get consistent colors. The stores were able to call around and see where they have more counters, but we still had to drive around and see if they were truly "beige" or the grayish and pink colored granite called "beige". And once we found 2 counter tops that worked (amongst about 20 gray versions of the "beige") we still weren't finding 4 side splashes that were the correct color instead of the grayish pink. You following me?

Essentially that meant making the rounds to about five Home Depots. We ended up purchasing four different counter tops and about nine different side splashes. The two below were close matches and three out of the four side splashes were great matches...one is close and will have to do for now. Pictured below is also the boxes of our floor tile that look nice with the counters...they looked bad with the grayish tone counter.The girls were troopers through it all. Thankfully I remembered to grab the DVD player to occupy them on our drive around Fairfax county searching for Home Depots. Considering we spent Thursday night driving an hour to a a Lowe's that had the vanity in stock that we wanted, I expected a lot of resistance tonight. However, the fact that we were still out at 9pm and they were watching movies in the car became very exciting to them! They actually asked to go to another Home Depot so we could stay out longer. Tonight our living room looks like this...

We're dreading packing up the returns, but I know we would have regretted settling with the original counters. It's now 10:37 and Brad is busy soldering some pipes. The water has been off since about 3:00pm when he began one of his plumbing projects. Our toilets are starting to remind me of an outhouse (lovely visual, I know). I guess the positive is the fact that I can ignore the dishes in the sink without any guilt since I can't wash them right now anyway. That means I can watch Friday Night Lights on Tivo without any guilt! Well, maybe a little guilt considering my husband is working upstairs right now...but I think I've earned a rest.