When it comes to picking out high-end fixtures and appointments for your bathroom remodel, there are tons of choices out there these days. Sure, that double-slipper tub or $2500 stainless steel toilet can make a statement, and even the local Big Box Home Store has some pretty unique stuff. But for a one of a kind sink, follow [The Samurai Carpenter]’s lead and carve a sink out of a boulder.
Starting with a stone he found off the porch of his house, [Samurai Carpenter] was able to rough out the shape of the basin with a diamond-bladed cutoff saw. A few plunge cuts within a hand-sketched outline gave him the room needed to hog out most of the material with a cold chisel and hammer. A diamond wheel on an angle grinder, along with a chisel bit on an impact drill, got him down to the final smooth finish. After the break there’s a video showing the final installation, including drilling out the drain hole and mounting the sink to the vanity, which is a beautiful rough-cut slab of what appears to be locally sourced wood. The whole installation looks fantastic and appears to function well; our only quibble is there’s no overflow in the basin, but it’s hard to see how he could have provided one without significantly complicating the project and potentially ruining the aesthetic.
Although they may not fit in with the natural vibe of his remodel, either this or this tricked out mirror could complete a high-end bathroom remodel.
Very classy. You could just leave the faucet running and call it a meditation fountain.
Please stop doing this! Already have too many great YouTube channels to watch.
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Certifiable quibble.
Very nice. I wouldn’t mind something like that in my own bathroom, but I think I would feel bad getting it covered in soap and toothpaste residue.
Which is why the bowl should be polished so that it is easier to clean.
http://s10.postimg.org/5nj7vc2c7/image.jpg
How do you even start to clean that?
Maybe a high pressure waterjet of some sort?
He assembled it wrong. The rubber washer goes ON TOP to stop water ingress. After having done 6 sinks in my house I know that this is very important, I made the same mistake as he did and had water get between the sink and the drain and then trapped.
No. The rubber washer always goes underneath, along with the paper or plastic washer that is the same size.
On top goes the plumbers putty.
Yes, this seems backwards. And yes, this is how it is designed to work.
(You know where else water gets trapped in a plumbing fixture? In the trap just beyond the tailpiece that we’re talking about here. It’s gross in there…everything about plumbing drains is gross. Get over it.)
Your kitchen sink does not have an overflow. Why not on a bathroom sink?
Perhaps a long time ago someone figured that these were a saving for idiots that leave a faucet running on a stoppered sink and leave, causing damage to the floor and more.. On the other hand that mini cloaca full of germs that connects the drain and the sanitary realm of the sink where one washes dishes was a health problem that was more important than early AADHAD support. Brushing teeth and gums causes bleeding, that’s the most elegant excuse to ban these germ traps in bathroom sinks. I even suspect that they have an evolutionary role in gingivitis and tooth decay, which is caused by an imbalance of good and bad flora in the mouth.
It would be nice perhaps to have a sink made out of the same stone that is the lime and hematite in our hard water, you’d never have to clean the stuff off, just the toothpaste slugs.
Ignoring the 95% wharggglbl of the above post (eh what I don’t even…?), my kitchen sink has overflow protection.
So does my bathroom sink, bath tub and laundry tub.
It’s actually pretty common, even in old houses like mine.
It’s *only* common in old houses, for reasons explained in that perfectly coherent post. My house was built in 2001. Three sinks, four basins, zero overflows.
My house, built in 2005, has overflows on the sinks.
check the building code for your area. It is often surprising what the code requires or what the incompetent building inspector overlooked. Things like no plumbing venting on a 15 foot horizontal drain run, or no external sheathing on a preserved wood foundation.
Code here allows it, and as the post above you says, still done today.
I’m glad you though that long ramble saying “overflow pipes occasionally have standing water that my become stinky” was coherent.
I’d love to hear his thoughts on fluoride.
I actually suspect that an overflow wouldn’t ruin the aesthetic. You could do it by simply drilling a straight hole from an appropriate level in the basin straight down, and hook it up in the drain pipe level rather than trying to integrate it into the basin. If you wanted to get a bit artsy with it, you could have the basin overflow it’s rim at a point into a smaller secondary basin with it’s own drain, but that requires more stone area for something that won’t be used much.
Actually, that last suggestion isn’t a bad starting point.
Instead of flowing into a second basin, why not let it flow around the sides into a low dish that the main basin sits in. If the drainage holes in the low dish were around (under?) the point of contact for the actual basin, then it would look as though the water simply magically disappears. Plus, if the low dish was the same size as the sideboard (i.e. the sideboard had a natural run-off down to the basin) then it wouldn’t even have any visual impact.
Think of it like one of those water-fountain features where the water overflows and is continuously recycled because the water drains back around under the ‘display stone’.