Monday, April 14, 2014

Never ending remodeling.

You'd think we were done with the remodel of Andy's bathroom.
But you'd be wrong.
We thought we were done in that bathroom.  
We were wrong too!

Here's the towel rods we originally installed.  They looked nice, but they kept pulling out of the wall or would fall off the brackets.  These are the kind where you don't have any visible screws, and they hook over brackets that you tighten a screw against the bracket to hold them to the wall.  

Nice in theory.  Not so nice in actual practice.

So, I've been brainstorming, and shopping, looking for something that would stay on the wall and still be "oil rubbed bronze."

I got the idea for the new ones we have by thinking about the stair rail in Mom and Dad's house.  It's simply a galvanized pipe screwed to the wall.  Now, granted, as a pretentious teenager, I thought it was cheap and hokey, and just lived with it.  (It was better once we painted it bright apple green!)  But now, I was thinking how it has been on that wall for almost 100 years and was trying to think of a towel rack that would do as well...Eureka!


 So I presented my idea to Kevin, to make towel racks out of galvanized pipe.  He was skeptical, but I searched Pinterest and found several examples.  I even found some painted black and a couple with a shelf.

I had him hooked on the idea with the shelf.


So on Saturday morning, Kev went to town and came home with all the hardware for new towel racks.
I washed them up--to scrub the protective coating and oil off the metal.  Kevin built his rack.  I spray painted it.  Kev then went out and found a piece of wood, cut it to fit, drilled the holes for the pipe, and we were in business!

I washed the piece of wood, because it was pretty dirty!  Kev spaced his brackets so that two were in studs and he installed those plastic brackets in the other holes.  THIS towel rack isn't going anywhere!

I LOVE it!

(Note, we did use ONE recycled pipe out of some that Kev had at home.  We didn't have any brackets or elbows.  I'm sure we could have found some if we'd gone to the farm, but it was easier to buy new.  But rest assured, I'm thinking of other ways to use some old pipe that's laying around!)