The vanity in our master bath has a dual-bowl culturred-marble vanity top with integral bowls. The top is in good condition, but the bowls are badly deteriorated around the drains. My wife is making noises about getting a new vanity top, but I was wondering if it would be possible to cut off the old bowls and replace them with under mount porcelain bowls.
I was thinking about using a narrow slot-cutting bit in a router mounted on a router sled to cut the old bowl a little lower than the underside of the counter and trimming it flush with a sander. After Googling "cutting cultured marble", it doesn't look like this technique will work very well.
Has anyone in the group done anything like this? Is there a better technique?
They can be re-glazed once, I was once told, but the one in our condo had already gone through that some years earlier. I found a local shop that made a new one for about $200 as I recall, about 6-7 years ago. It was a small, single bowl. More recently, I had new vanity tops made at the same shop for our home. This time I went for a separate porcelain bowl mounted below a cultured marble slab with cutout. Hard to say the cost since we got shower walls in the same order.
I think it would be hard to cut a decent hole for under-mounted bowl in an existing top. OTOH, a drop-in bowl would not require a finished edge, so that's a possibility. Try it. What have you got to lose?
By far your cheapest solution will be to replace the existing cultured marble top with a brand new replacement. You should do this immediately, it would probably be best to do this as a turn key project with a contractor, preferably the one who makes the cultured marble tops. You might well consider buying brand new faucets, WIFE will like that. But I already know that you have the DIY bug, and will not heed these few simple words of advice.
I sure hope you know where this is headed.
You're going to mess around trying to save fifty cents and it will cost you hundreds. It sounds like you are already thinking about trying to do this cutting in location. You know you're going to get dust and slurry all over the bathroom that will eventually lead to needing to take the top out of the bathroom. By this time, though, you will have that dust in the ventilation system, ground into the floor, and living in the towel cabinet. You will be several days into the project by this time and WIFE will start to notice and complain lightly about the time, dust, could have hired a handyman, and even at least one "are you almost finished?"
I sure hope you know where this is headed.
These are all bad signs. You will have scratched the top you are trying to save and are hoping she won't notice and the nightmares of trying to color match and glue in new sink bowls will be hitting several other bumps in the road like incompatible adhesives, epoxy smeared on the finish that you can't get off, and that slight gap over on one edge that didn't lay up quite right. I forgot to mention that you broke that one faucet down tube wrestling the top out of the bathroom.
I sure hope you know where this is headed.
Once she comes out to the garage to see how this is going, you will be going to the store to look at new tops anyway. She is going to see that nifty display of the nice granite top with the white under top sinks and the gorgeous (translates to expensive) faucet sets. Wouldn't that look nice in the bathroom.
I sure hope you see where this is headed.
Once she has her cap set on the new granite top, that dust and slurry you have ground into the floor in the bathroom will lead to changing the floor to that neat new ceramic flooring with the designer borders. Wouldn't that terracotta grout set this all off nicely? It would blend right in with the new granite top.
I sure hope you see where this headed.
The new faucets will require new towel bars and other decorative items. The granite top will make that bad spot on the mirror where the silvering failed to stand out so much that you need a new mirror. The lighting around the mirror was never quite right, but now it will need to coordinate with the new faucets and towel bars.
I sure hope you know where this is headed.
The dust from your first attempt is ground into the carpeting in the hall and it looks even worse after you tracked the stuff around. The granite installers ground it in even deeper. This is beginning to look like you might need to consider new carpet.
I sure hope . . .
Did you decide to DIY that ceramic tile install? . . . . . . . . . .
Believe me. Hire the best contractor in town to install that brand new cultured marble top. Don't quibble about the price. Go ahead and buy her brand new faucets similar to what she had. You will be way ahead of the curve.
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