Showing posts with label bathroom vanity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bathroom vanity. Show all posts

Monday, March 10, 2014

INVENTORY: Bathroom Vanity Lights

This is certain to be a boring post.  And I am not sure why I care.  This blog is supposed to be a dialogue with my wife and heaven knows I often bore her much worse than this post ever could.  But still, on the off chance anyone else is reading this, go ahead and change the channel.  And away we go...

We have pretty much every fixture in the master bath figured out now except for the following:
  • Towel Bars
  • Lights over the sink / Vanity lights
  • A chair or stool to set beside the tub to accommodate a baby washer or a dry friend of a tubber - but that is just furniture
This post is concerned with the lights over the sink.  As with most things in this house, the requirements for the lights over the bathroom sink present certain problems. Specifically, although the wall behind the sink is flat (unlike the rest of the house), it is not square - by which I mean, this bathroom is on the top floor and the ceiling/roof slopes down towards the right side of the sink counter.  Therefore, the placement of the light on the right side of the sink is going to be a little cramped by the ceiling dropping down over it.  Look.



It feels pretty cramped on the right side of that space by the wall with your head bumping the ceiling.  And, because of the ceiling the light on the right has will probably have to be placed a little lower on the wall than you might normally install it - and, inevitably, the one on the left will be positioned to match.  The wires you see in the photo are just guesses at light location - they will be moved and boxes will be installed in the final location once we pick out our lighting.

Anyway, there is no dearth of choices when it comes to vanity sconces.  Resto Hardware, West Elm and the rest are positively bursting with them - but obviously, that isn't how we roll (we being me mostly).

Anyway, to the point, last weekend I found a pair of wall sconce lights at BIG NYC in Astoria that I think will probably do the trick... maybe.  Here they are.



What are they?  Urban Archaeology "Loft Light".  They are supposed to have glass cylinders on them.



The pair only came with one glass cylinder - but happily I found that Grand Brass sells matching blown glass "opal" milk glass cylinders for a fraction of UrbArch's price (about 83% less).

Here is what they are supposed to look like:













They were very reasonably priced (do I need to keep saying that about everything I pick up? By now it should be clear that I would not purchase it if it weren't reasonably priced - or, if I did, I would try to justify how much I overpaid).

So, why do I think these will work?  Here is why: most of the sconce lights I like sort of blossom off the wall up and a little out, like they need room to grow.  As a result of the sloping wall/ceiling, a sconce with such ambitions is going to look cramped.  Happily, the design of these sconces with the back plate framing the sconce/light element seems to contain that expansive quality.  The frame creates a finite space in which the fixture lives.  I think this makes sense.

As I think about it further, what would probably make most sense would be an overhead vanity light - something situated horizontally over the center of the sink.  It's never too late I guess.  But, for now, we're going with these (unless something better shows up at BIG).

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Upstate Update: Master Bath Progress

I went up to the house on Sunday for the first time in over two months (due to certain complications with our new contractor) and there was a lot to see -- almost all of it in the master bathroom.  So, in no particular order...

Remember this lovely vanity/counter/sink combo that I picked up at BIG NYC back in February 2012? Here it is sitting at BIG.

Well, after much back and forth about whether it would fit, it looks like it will finally have a home in our master bathroom!  So exciting!!!  I'm glad I don't have to help carry that massive marble slab up the stairs into the bathroom - it weighs an awful lot.

And look how nicely this tile border I devised for the master bath floor came out.



And here are some panoramae I assembled.  They look wonky, but that is just the panorama software.