My Phil’ toothbrush buzzing loudly every morning at 20 past 6am when i’m trying to carefully put my eyeliner on without stabbing my eye out – okay. That was enough for me. It wasn’t the bumping into each other that happened daily in our teeny-wee bathroom.
Nor was it the heavy breathing and puffing when the other person was taking ‘too long’ at the mirror. No, for me…it was listening to that flipping brush buzz EVERY MORNING right beside my ear. “I know,” i said on this particular morning, white-knuckling my mascara wand like i could poke him with it. “We’re getting two sinks.” “That’l cost you an arm and a leg,” he said, words slurred from his overflowing mouth of toothpaste foam. Oh boy.
Here we are, Six months down the line and i’m not exaggerating when i say that it has been the best investment we’ve made into our home yet. Sure, having two sinks means that our mornings run smoothly today (thank god we don’t sass each other for hogging the mirror anymore); but it also means that we’re actually okay to talk to each other before we leave the house for breakfast.
Before and during the installation process was stressful as all hell.
Meeeeaaaassin*g our bathroom took DAYS. With an ancient-school tape-measure that floooowed back like a spring and hit me in the fingers multiple times. Our bathroom is around 8ft x10ft – its small, but we make enough room for two sinks.
Looking at vanities online and actually contacting the lovely trademen took aaaages. And who knew that googling something as simple as ‘how to install two bathroom sinks’ would have me trapped in a YouTube vortex for MONTHS. One thing i DID discover during my hours of research: you need at least sixty inches of wall space to fit two sinks.
We had 72 inches to play with – winning! Plumbing wise; THAT is when things started to get super tricky (and of course, expensive). The main wall our original sink sat on was – bang in the middle.
Meaning all of the original pipes and connections were literally in the places we needed them NOT to be for two sinks. Dave- our plumber- God bless his cotton socks. This guy drinks more tea than anyone i’ve ever met in a single hour and always has spotless work boots.
Anyway. Dave informed us that pretty much, we would have to start from scratch with everything water related. “We can do it,” he said. “but i’ll need to run new feed pipes for both hot & cold water to each sink. And then you’ll need individual waste lines as well.” Turns out; we could keep the original drain line for one of the new sinks- which saved us a couple hundred pounds.
However – getting the second drain line meant cutting into the floor – only to discover our bathroom sits directly above our kitchen. Yeah, didn’t expect that. But also found out that whoever wired our house back in the eighties – had some freakishly creative ideas about routing their cables.
Serious blogging for another day. I became completely obsessed with measuring the spacing between each sink. Standard distance is 36 inches from centre sink to centre sink.
But we decided to go 38 inches simply because we are both quite wide-set and i didn’t want our sinks looking like we were using the bathrooms at a motorway service station. Trust me. Those couple of inches make ALL the difference when you’re both furiously digging around for your face creams at the same time.
Deciding on how much storage space each person needed vs. what we needed “shared storage” for was actually a lot harder than i expected. When you have a single sink – you shove everything into any space you can find. Throw in another sink and BAM – suddenly you find yourselves negotiating areas.
Whose side gets the hair dryer? Where do you store “joint” items – you know, floss; moisturizer etc? Eventually we decided on a custom vanity with 4 drawers each (his&hers sides) + one shared cabinet for extra storage/kitchen roll + cleaning products.
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For ages i had been fantasizing about getting soft-close drawers. Yes they were pricey- but boy did they WORTH it to stop me chucking my drawers open at 6:15am. Especially considering how many times i used to awaken my actual neighbours!
Mirror. Mirror drama. There were many words said about what we wanted over our new sinks that should have been left unsaid. iKnow iWANTED one large mirror spanning over both sinks.
Looks cleaner; better reflects light; easier to keep clean. Phil wanted two separate mirrors so we didn’t have to look at one another when we woke up in the mornings. (“look Emily, i just want to concentrate on doing my skincare.” Oh how you charmed me one day with that sentence!) In the end we compromised on one large mirror- but individual wall lights hung at different heights so we could each have our own enough lighting. Those wall lights.
Wow. I don’t think we could have gone-back if we tried. Instead of having those boring old bulbs hanging across the top of your mirror- we got cute little pendant lights hanging down right at face height.
Gone were the days of ugly shadows underneath your chin. No more wiping away tears of frustration when trying to see if you had a spot or if the light was just tricking you. Because the pendants can be moved up & down as well – i can hang mine down low when i am concentrating on washing my face and Phil can have his higher up since he is 6” taller than me.
The installation process was madness. Straight up bollocks for five days. Five days of scrubbing our teeth in the kitchen; washing our face with a flannel & bowl like we were wild camping in the Lakes.
Five days of listening to relentless drilling, hammering & Dahve’s verbal recording of every diy*project our house has ever seen through its walls. (“oooooookay lovely. Now that’s definitely not how you’d install that.” was pretty much his way of telling us what an idiot probably did it.) The first time we turned both taps on at the same time AND had water trickle out of them (with actually water pressure)…magic. We basically stood there with our jaws on the floor watching in disbelief as water flowed from TWO SINKS.
Ahhhhh i know. What i didn’t expect was for having two sinks to actually change our entire MORNING ritual. And i don’t mean just the functional aspect of it.
We both, without speaking about it or agreeing to it, simply took our own sides.
Me on the left (closest to the shower), Phil on the right (closest to the door). Within days we had personal bubble mail organisers labelled up; configuring our new sinks space exactly how we liked them: Now for the most unexpected thing of all.
We actually started speaking to each other IN the mornings. When you take away the “fight” to get to the sink first – you actually have time to have a conversation about your day; the weekend etc. *I bet you’re curious about how much all of this cost us too… * vanity = £1200 (made locally by a friendly carpenter) * Plumber = £800 (Dave- see what I did there?) * mirror & pendant lights = £400 * actual installation = £300 Grand total = £2700. Not cheap.
But when you divide that by how many years we are likely to stay in this house- that’s ONLY £2 PER MONTH for some damn bathroom peace! It has now been SIX months since we installed these babies – and quite frankly i cant imagine our mornings going back to how they were. This morning Phil sat in his sink brushing his teeth as i stood at mine prepping my skin.
Having our own little sections of the bathroom to get ready at; alone. Having our own lighting perfectly placed so when you turn to speak to your other half – you both look damn fabulous. No stupid toothbrush buzzing near your face; no awkward sidestepping to try not bump into the other – youBoth have a nice relaxing (& quiet) morning knowing you BOTH have your own sink.
Sometimes the best home-improvements are the ones that fix problems you didn’t know were bothering you so much.
