Happy Houseiversary To Us!

Chickens-

Today is the one year anniversary of Charming Suitor and I buying our forever home.  Now you would think this wouldn't be a big deal, since I'd been living in it for 20 years when the papers were finally signed, but it was.  Everything I always loved about this place got better the moment CS moved in, and then EVEN BETTER when we could officially call it ours.  I think the same happens for people who live together for a long time and then finally get married.  It just brings everything into delicious focus.  So I want to take this moment to say Happy Houseiversary to my extraordinary Charming Suitor...my dream house is anywhere you are, but I'm so glad it is here :)

In honor of our Houseiversary, we have a new bit of updating on the improvement projects, now that we are six months in...

As we speak the drain tile and sump pump are being installed in the basement.  Very boring, but the peace of mind that our currently historically dry basement will remain so, makes it a very happy thing indeed.

In even better news, we found a sink for our basement vanity project!

Remember our awesome Craigslist find?

We knew immediately that it would make the perfect vanity for the basement bathroom.  The patina on the wood and brass details are going to bring some much needed warmth and originality to a space that traditionally can feel a little cold and generic.  The next choice we had to make was about the sink.  We knew that we wanted a single long trough sink, both for the look (I hate side by side sinks) but also for the functionality (I hate getting elbowed in the head when CS and I try to brush our teeth together over the one sink in our current bathroom).  So a single long sink with two sets of faucets would not only be a great look, but also would be very useful.

And Look. What. We. Found.

Is that not the sexiest sink you ever did see????

The sink is almost 4 feet long, just over a foot wide, and about 4 inches deep.  It is from a company called Wetstyle which is a Canadian company that our architects suggested we check out because they have always found the products to be that magical combination of superior quality and reasonable prices.  And boy am I glad they did.  It was love at first sight.  Not only did they have the PERFECT size and shape of sink that absolutely matched the picture we had in our heads of what we wanted, but they were also lovely to work with.  When I emailed a couple of questions, I had answers practically instantaneously.  Their products are made of a natural stone composite material that is very eco-friendly, but also enormously durable.  You can get them in a high gloss (which we are doing for this one) or a very cool matte finish that I find inspiring and am pretty sure we will be exploring more soon.  I got lost on their website for the better part of an hour, dreaming of future bathrooms.  After all, there are five more on the horizon, lord help us!

After we found the sink online, we headed over to a local design studio to see them in person, and were very impressed with how they looked and felt.  We compared them in person to sinks from other high end companies, and they were the clear winner...beating out a lot of sinks that were double the price! We ended up ordering the high gloss for this project because this sink will be getting a lot of use in tooth brushing and shaving, and we wanted easy quick cleanup.  But I have to say, when I felt the matte finishes?  I definitely want to do at least one of these somewhere in the house.  I can't really describe how nice the surfaces felt, but I never thought I'd want to pet a sink....until now.  

I don't know if this pic captures the matte finish that well, but, trust me, it is a gorgeous look and when you touch it, it feel sort of cool and soft and smooth like a river rock.  

And I know we are literally like 2 years away from even thinking about the Master Bath, but, um, I can't stop dreaming about this....

Shut the front door!  I'm a bathtub girl anyway, but this?  Can't you just imagine?  It sends my heart into palpitations.  

Sorry.  Where was I?

Oh, basement bathroom.  It feels like now that the vanity is coming together the rest of the bathroom is going to fall into place, design-wise.  And it was definitely smart to start here.  The brass handles on the vanity mean that we are actually going to go with antiqued brass finishes for all of the faucets etc., so that the room feels cohesive, in a pretty traditional or old-world style to underscore the age of the buffet.  I think having this cool modern Wetstyle trough sink paired with the antique vanity and antique-repro brass faucets is going to be pretty spectacular.  We went with the undermount version of this sink because the buffet is already counter height, so adding another four inches of vessel sink would have been very bad for short little me.  We will replace the wood top with some sort of stone countertop TBD, and the sink will be attached underneath.  SO EXCITING!

The other big find for the house is the kitchen table!

I know, you are asking yourself, isn't our dear Polymath some 18 months or so away from having a kitchen into which she can put a table?  And the answer is, um, yup.  But when the table finds you, you have to go with it.

It is a 1920s oak trestle table that was in the conference room of a bank!  A full four feet by eight feet, the top is just a solid slab of oak.  Gorgeous oak...

Look at that grain!  Couldn't resist it.  We found this beauty in Milwaukee at a cute little antique place, and all I can say is that it was a total STEAL.  Like, think IKEA pricing.  We are headed back to Milwaukee in a couple of weeks to pick it up...and foist it on my parents weekend place until we can give it a home!  Thank goodness they don't care if we temporarily redecorate their dining room, because we can't store it here while we are under construction, and to be honest, both of our storage units are full to the brim!  So big props to Mom and Dad for the assist :)

I'd say welcome to Spring, but we are expecting about 4-5 inches of snow today, so happy Wednesday!

Yours in Good Taste,

The Polymath