Finishing off the powder room FOR REAL this time!

What's your visitors' first impression of your house?  If many of your visitors drive hours and hours to visit you to take advantage of your proximity to skiing, then chances are their first serious impression is of your downstairs bathroom.  Ours was pretty grim when we moved in - it had doors on both ends, making it a tunnel that resulted in awkward conversations such as "Oh sorry, you go first.." "No, you can go..."  It was lavender, the sink leaked out of all orifices, the toilet and sink were a cruddy beige marblish look, the original floor was buried under layers of god only knows what, the window was new but everything around it was drafty as could be, the original plaster was covered with laminate, which was then (badly) painted, it had a tub with missing chunks of fiberglass from where doors had been ripped off...need I go on?  Oh yeah, and a poorly installed, not-quite-finished flimsy beadboard ceiling...and the medicine cabinet was installed over the toilet, so when you were looking in the mirror you'd occasionally drop your toothpaste or your makeup you-know-where...ok, here's the true before picture:

This was after we already replaced the vanity and the toilet

You can read all about the layout change, the lessons we learned during the triumphant gutting, reusing the sink and mirrors we found in the attic, and the eventual installation of new wainscoting. You'll notice that the date on that last post was June 2010.  Since then, we've had this (shown from the opposite door of the view above).

Much better...but once the initial thrill of just having the previous room gone wore off, there was still much to be desired. We accomplished a few hundred other projects since abandoning this one (again with the DIYADD), but after a certain point, you just want some gosh-darned doors on your cabinets!  

So when my dad offered to come over and help out over Columbus Day weekend, we couldn't say yes, yes, YES fast enough.  Here we are gluing up a frame to attach the cabinet doors to - the frame itself made from poplar from my grandfather's woodlot in Ohio. 

Now onto the doors themselves - bead board to match the wainscoting in a poplar frame.  

Gabe got sanding duty.

Here are the doors all clamped up - we accomplished some more cool projects while we waited for the glue to dry.  To be blogged at a later date.

Here's what it looked like under the sink.  Random lengths of drywall, the back of the bookshelf in the kitchen, and exposed wires and pipes in a large chase leading upstairs. 

We figured we should clean that all up while we were in there, so we painted some 1/4" plywood and screwed it on all three walls.  It will be easily removable in case we need to access anything back there, but in the meantime, it'll look a lot better and we won't lose things in the nooks and crannies. Here's the frame primed and painted, plus the new back and side walls of the cabinet.

Looking better already!  Much more to come!