The sink we purchased for the powder room is a porcelain, wall-mounted unit. No pedestal, no legs standing on the floor to provide support. It’s Italian. That it is Italian means it is, of course, a work of art and beauty. It also means its dimensions are in metric. When we opened the box we discover two things:
- The sink is heavy, about 21 kg
- The mounting holes through which one bolts the unit to the wall are about 11″ apart, while the studs in the wall are 12″.
The installation instructions directed attaching the mounting bolts through the studs. However, connecting with the studs was not possible because of (#2) above.
The simple solution was to open up the wall and insert some additional studs in the correct location. But, when opened up, we found the space was consumed by pipes.
The initial reaction — oh no! — was followed by conflicting views about what to do; what not to do. To get past this state of emotion it was necessary to explore the alternatives and while exploring the alternatives making sure the contractor participated, as he was the one who needed to do the work so he needed to be on side.
The alternatives included: [1] moving the pipes [2] positioning the sink off centre [3] looking for an alternate solution (sink / vanity) [4] the French Cleat [5] build a second wall in front of the existing one.
As we could not return the sink we wanted to avoid purchasing another (#3). Positioning it off centre (#2) would work, but it would look odd and I would find irritating. This would be something we would need to live with for the years to come, and what was initially irritating would fester. The contractor was hesitant about moving the pipes as this was a messy option, complicated by the need to move pipes in the basement as well as the wall.
The French Cleat is a means to hang things on the wall. It is often used to hang kitchen cabinets. I used a cleat to hang the cabinets in the laundry room. Hangman makes a version said to be able to hold 300 pounds which is more than 21 kg weight of the sink. It costs 24 US$. Installing it would require the plasterboard to be replace with plywood and drilling holes in the cleat to align with the sink. But lurking in the back of our minds was the concern that, as the sink extends much further away from the wall than a cabinet, there is increased leverage multiplying the effective weight and torque on the cleat. So while it may be able to support the weight of the sink, would it support the weight of someone leaning on the sink? The image of the sinking falling to the floor, smashing a foot, followed by gushes of hot and cold streams of water hitting the protagonist in the face as the plumbing failed seemed unappealing.
Coming to a conclusion on the approach required a discussion of the pros and cons over a period of several days. This dialogue helped everyone to better understand the options and become comfortable with an approach having better understood the issues.
We settled on #5, building a second wall. This was proposed by the contractor. The approach enabled us to comply completely with the installation instructions. Importantly, it is a simpler approach to get the studs in the right place and with the necessary quality of ingredients. The downside is it will take up some extra space (i.e., the thickness of the new wall) but we have the room, so keeping it simple drove the day.
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