Grinding toward a finish

Well, everything is in as of today -- but nothing is working yet.

Let's get started with the happy events of the day. I started the day with some things that are fast, but feel like the room is getting settled. So I added the (properly colored) faceplate to the socket, swapped out our old light switch for something with a more modern feel, mounted the mirror, and put a swanky new flange over the water feed for the toilet, about which you'll hear much more shortly.

Yes, it's slightly crooked; I tried dozens of times

modern light switch!

it glows in the dark!

The mounted mirror that I have photoshopped myself out of

And that highly polished new flange

Then onto the main work at hand for today -- the toilet. Getting in was not easy, but I did manage to do it -- twice. The first time was a breeze, and I got it onto the posts on the second try. Then I realized that it wouldn't work. The wax ring that seals everything and keeps it from leaking wasn't touching anything, because the flange was too far below the floor. Two hardware stores later, I had installed a flange extension, and then it took about a dozen tries and a lot of resting before I could get the toilet on the posts again. But it eventually happened.

Then, of course, the hassle of getting everything hooked up, bolts tightened, etc. -- all of this in a space where tools basically don't fit (especially off on that left hand side), and then we were ready to turn on the water supply. And that's when things didn't go as planned. The water feed was leaking -- leaking, at least I think, from the feed itself. The shutoff valve seems fine -- when it's off, there's no water leaking. So tomorrow I will see what's what and get this thing working, so I can at least test the toilet properly.  Here's that feed in close up:

The chunky, long octagon of grey at the bottom is the shutoff valve -- but if you look carefully you'll see something odd -- above that are a but, a long but very thin pipe, another nut and what appears to be the actual ⅜ valve. There's a lot of stuff there, when there should just be a shut off valve and a ⅜ opening. Hopefully things will come apart correctly once I have the water shut off, and I can get this thing to work. Right now I can't even test it.

Let's turn to the sink, which also took some fussing around with, and also isn't quite done. I won't go into details there except to say that I need a slightly wider u-trap so that I can back the cabinet properly up against the wall. When that happens -- assuming all the connections work properly -- it should look like this:

The view -- that window will get addressed, too, but not by me

sink in situ

The classic overhead shot

The register should be arriving tonight, by the way, and then I can let the cat wander in, something he has been trying to do every waking moment since the project started. The problem is that he will dash in and try to quickly eat whatever poisonous material he can find (tape, chips of tile adhesive, grout). Or climb into the air ducts, which is all very well for spy films, but will end quite badly for this cat, I'm sure.