Thought I'd give an update on the remodeling.  Some things went just fine, others not so much.  But I think that's pretty much par for the course during a process like this, right?

So here are a few of the BEFORE pix.

funky sink fixtures and countertop

ugly wall color

And the process begins.

The sink removal went easily enough

I was able to clean up the sinks where the faucets had been removed and also scrape off all the silicone around the edges, without much trouble, out in the front yard.  Elmo of course came out with me and supervised.  

new plumbing attachments went well

I worried that the mirror would interfere with the removal of the counter top,

 but that also came off without a hitch.

There was some question about whether the new top would cover up the point on the wall where the paint stops*, so we were in the other room measuring that new top when we heard a crash... the mirror had come loose from the wall and dropped onto the frame!  Amazingly that huge mirror had not broken (!) and was still sitting on what was left of the old counter top.  We were able to carry it into Alex's room and lay it flat on his bed, though that sucker is HEAVY and I had to stop (twice) to readjust my grip on that trek of just a few steps.

But doesn't the new counter look nice? (FYI before the bathroom was an ugly brown, apparently it was an ugly gray.)

Someone had used some sort of tar to attach the mirror, to a thickness of at least 3/8", which of course all had to be scraped off of the back of the mirror (and the wall, but of course that was easy enough, and any gouges will be covered up.)  Bill was mostly worried about breaking the mirror, while I was worried about him scraping through the back of the mirror, but though it took a lot of time (and was quite a headache) it seemed to go well.

*Is anyone surprised that it won't (by a very small fraction of an inch) so Bill took off the counter top before he made yet another trip to get a sheet of drywall to go behind the mirror, because despite giving the store the dimensions we needed, the counter top is a standard size and not deep enough) and I gave those spots on the wall a quick splash of paint, which I then helped dry faster with my hair dryer.