After the big, beautiful, accessible shower was completed, Team Galdamez (Contractor Juan and his assistant Noe) moved on to the vinyl floor, the toilet, and the vanities. That’s right, vanities, plural. This bath is a huge room, so there are sinks and vanities for each end because I wanted a place to wash a few dishes downstairs, but didn’t want to give up the fancy sink I had fallen in love with. But, after all the demolition time that had necessitated closing off the whole area, first priority was installing the new toilet, since this is the only bath on this floor of the house.
Since I was tearing out or moving pretty much everything in this bath, it made sense to get a new toilet. The special features of this one are chair height (so I could ditch the unstable booster seat), “power flush” (no more jiggly handle and multiple flushes) and a hand-held, temperature-controlled bidet sprayer (see the sprayer clipped on the side of the tank). This is a new product from Shattaf (the temperature mixing valve is the new part) which I bought from Amazon. Note: that route had annoying, repeated delivery issues. The first order came incomplete (missing the sprayer part). The replacement orders (yes, I had to reorder THREE times) kept being redirected to my PO Box instead of the street address I specified on the order. I’d recommend going direct to Shattaf or another merchant if you can. For those with mobility issues, I can confirm that getting chair height instead of standard height toilet is very helpful. One more accessibility option added is a new grab bar installed on the wall.
Next priority after the toilet was putting in the vanities and sinks. In the process, I discovered a neat fact about online shopping. If you put an item on a shopping list (or put it in your cart and then hit “save for later”), within a week or so the store usually puts it on sale or offers some sort of discount, like free shipping. I put several choices for vanities in a wish list at Home Depot, and sure enough they got put on a “one day only” 60% off sale! That’s when I made my final choice and purchased them. So it is really a plus to pick some possible choices early and then watch to see if the prices change.
I was 
able to get cabinets from the fancy-shmancy “designer collection” for less than the basic plain offerings because of that sale. One is 48″ and the other is 60″ wide. The shorter one has drawers on the sides and the open space with doors in the middle — I chose that to accommodate placement of the planned double sink. The longer one has the doors on each end, because the plumbing for the sink was planned to be at one end. For both I ordered the new “Thinscape” composite countertops. These are engineered solids made from layers of paper, so the pattern goes through and the edges can be cut or routed and shaped as needed. It comes in 48″ and 76″ lengths with backsplashes included. They looked good, but plans changed.
Because 
I was unfamiliar with the differences in which sinks work with vanity cabinets versus base cabinets, the double bowl, stainless sink I had ordered did NOT work. It was HUGE and would have taken up the entire 48″ cabinet top. So, we had to ditch that counter (i.e., return to store) and get something that would work with a smaller sink. I asked Juan (my contractor) to pick a top that would work while he was at Home Depot getting other supplies. He picked a gray and white stone pattern that works great. It came with the sink built in (which speeded up the installation) and it works fine for my purposes (being able to wash out the few dishes I keep downstairs). It’s difficult for me to climb the stairs to the kitchen, so I tend to cook in bulk, load up the downstairs fridge, and then microwave small portions later. That’s why this sink has the pull down sprayer type of faucet — to make it easier to wash those dishes.
The other vanity cabinet was delayed because of delivery issues — basically Home Depot’s website was having major malfunctions. Stuff would show up as “available in store”, but when I’d place an order it would switch to a projected availability of weeks and weeks away. Sometimes Juan would go to Home Depot and find out that the item was actually there, but the online ordering just didn’t show it. Other times he’d go to pick up an order the website said was ready and it would not really be there. When I’d call the 800 number for Home Depot the staff would confirm that their system was messed up, that even they could not see the correct status of items.
The main vanity (the one I use for traditional purposes (getting ready, brushing teeth, doing hair, etc.) has a lovely glass vessel sink that I got from Wayfair, along with the farmhouse pump type faucet in “oil rubbed bronze” finish (looks black with brass highlights). The mirror is framed with the same finish. The black Thinscape counter was picked to showcase this sink. The red and gold colors will be complimented by most of the artwork I plan to hang in this space. This also allowed me to unpack a blown glass art sculpture I bought 15 years ago, but have had packed away for 10 years. The colors match perfectly. I love it when a plan comes together.
I had originally purchased an identical bronze-framed mirror for the other vanity/sink, but when Juan opened the box, the mirror was shattered. He commented that the bronze color frame wouldn’t work as well over this vanity now that we had changed the counter color. I agreed and asked him to pick one that would work. He planned to get a white or gray frame for the replacement, but found one in brushed nickel that matches the fixtures on this sink. The chest of drawers and pie safe that I use for storage were also moved back into place (I have plans to refinish the chest). The door you see in this pic leads into the crafts area, which is another installment in my remodeling story. There will also be more about this room once I get all the artwork hung (some I already have, but some of it is new — bought just for this remodel — and still in transit from the artists to me).