I saw a $1,300.00 bathroom sink today......Why???

[SoCalDem]

It was a very interesting sink.. Stainless steel around where the faucets were.. Highly polished chrome faucets, and the bowl part of the sink was super thick green tinted GLASS..The pedestal was an opaque glass, as well..

It was interesting, but why would anyone spend that much for a silly bathroom sink ???

We got our beautiful pedestal square sink on sale for $89.00 when Home Base went out of business.. No matter how much money I had, I would never be able to spend $1,300.00 on a sink..

[Maeve]

1. But even that is too chintzy for a $6,000 shower curtain!

former Tyco International CEO Dennis Kozlowski

http://www.sptimes.com/2002/08/09/Columns/Of_greed_and_6_000_sh.shtml

[DS1]

2. Why? Because somewhere out there is a check with the

seller's name written on it. If nobody bought thirteen hundred dollar bathroom sinks, nobody would make them.

Think "Bennifers" $200,000 jewel-encrusted toilet seat..

[Liberal Veteran]

3. It's still kinda sad though....

Some of the shows I see on HGTV are like that. Instead of helpful hints for those of us on a real budget, they have a lot shows that say things like "The owner's have budgeted just 30000 dollars to redecorate the nursery.".

[DS1]

9. putting on my tinfoil hat

It's part of a trend I'm seeing, buy more than what you can afford, material goods are more important than actual happiness, don't invest that money you saved in education, spend it on perishable goods that you'll spend the rest of your life paying for.

4 years good, 2 years bad. Loans that is!

[SOteric]

14. It places a whole new importance

on the term 'wage slave.' Don'tchya think?

[Piperay]

13. I saw one of those shows

where these people alloted thirty thousand for their room to look like a French nightclub with a baby grand piano that they didn't even know how to play! :wtf: The room turned out to be butt ugly and looked more like a bordello than a nightclub. :puke:

[blondeatlast]

25. I'm thinking of starting a website (seriously) about how one decorates

a tract home.

Where to find the real bargains, how to thrift shop like the pros.

I'm happily lower-middle class and I love to decorate. I just can't afford to . . .

[private_ryan]

4. $1300 for a lot of them is like $10 for us

that's why.

[mouse7]

5. I saw - get this- Earth-friendly, solid hardwood cabinetry

saw different examples of different woods... walnut, cherry, (no mahogany), etc. I was doing phone bank work at the showrrom of a specialty contractor. The pricing stucture was...

..."ask for quote."

Should have been, "If you have to ask, don't bother."

[SoCalDem]

7. You know what they say.. If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it

I have also seen Murano glass chandeliers that START at 7,000.00 and go WAAAAY up from there.. But at least with that , you are buying artwork..but a sink???

[DavidMS]

6. A fool and their money are easily parted.

I can understand droping that kind of money on furnature (custom built in pieces), but a SINK? Somthing to wash your hands over. I wonder if Kleptocrat-style Solid Platnum handles are an option?

[BlackVelvetElvis]

19. High priced items were big sellers this season

Especially stuff from Neiman Marcus. Some people had money to burn with all the tax cuts. Oh well, let's hope the economic benefits will trickle down.

[blondeatlast]

26. Where have I heard that before?

Oh, yeah, the last time I was unemployed . . .

[Malva Zebrina]

8. I dunno

my bathroom sink is a holdover from the 1940's--it is sort of a peach color, and I have made a nice little skirt to go around it as it is bare below it's basin ; it matches the shower curtain and the window curtain and goes with the wallpaper all of which I sewed. It was all made from sheets--pink striped and it all looks very good.

I myself, tiled the shower as it had to be built when we moved into this 200 year old house. I preferred to do that rather than install a fiberglass unit. I never did anything like that before, and I did a compulsively, neat and tidy job and I also made the template for the vinyl flooring , set it down, and glued that into place and it fit perfectly! I never did anything like that in my life before I moved here twenty one years ago. It is still good after all this time too! Not trendy and not expensive and not showy, but rather practical , looks nice and does the job.

But, I did sew those new striped curtains , sink skirt and shower curtain just recently. :-)

I am so proud that I did all of that to preserve things that work well enough but do not exactly keep up with the new trendy, very expensive, glitzy stuff. I live in a comfy place.



medicine cabinet was rescued from the cellar of my husband's childhood home when his parents died and the home was being sold. --it was painted bile green, but I stripped it down to it's oak finish and there it is now in my comfy bathroom- wood--with a nice beveled mirror hanging over that forties sink!.

[SoCalDem]

12. It sounds luscious..

My aunt & uncle had green porcelain fixtures in their bathroom, and I always thought they were beautiful.. She had grape ivy wallpaper and deep purple carpeting.. It was gorgeous.. The fixtures were from the 1930's and were art deco in style..

Her sink had a "skirt" too..

I too did a "learn-as-you-go" tiling adventure, and I agree.. You will do a getter job, even if you don't know all the tricks and shortcuts....because YOU are doing it for yourself.. It makes you feel great when people comment of your lovely room, and you know that you did it yourself :)

We have to remove the wallpaper I dearly loved , because my stinky-rat cat has peeled it, but I am looking forward to the new spruce up we plan for the house.. Just new paint, new rugs and a floor to ceiling "library" in one end of the living room.. New window treatments too..

My eyesight dilemma has put me into high gear.. I have wanted to do this for a long time, and now it seems like time is of the essence if I want to be able to help with the transformation and see the results :)..

[Malva Zebrina]

18. go for it--sometimes wallpaper get old and faded and then it makes you

feel old and faded if you have to look at it day after day.

wow-- a floor to ceiling library! :bounce: :toast:

[lumpy]

34. I love my Robin's egg blue bath fixtures

hold over from the 50s. Will last another 50 years, it's so well made. A few chips here and there that I touch up with porcelain paint I mix to match the color. My boys have talked up replacing the fixtures; over my dead body. When 'I'm outta' here they can do whatever they want. I just got a great new shower curtain with moon and stars in the same blue shade and I am continuing to admire it.
You might say I am comfy with shabby chique as long as it is clean.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

10. Because filthy rich people need a more expensive sink to get clean .

[blondeatlast]

27. Nailed it.

It's tough to wash blood off one's hands.

[Cooley Hurd]

11. Some people buy a sink like that so...

...they can tell people how much it cost. They have to because affixing a Lexus logo to it would be just plain tacky! :D

[Liberal Veteran]

17. Also in case that cute blind guy from the commercial shows up....

....so he can feel up your fixtures and then comment on your great bathroom.

[flamingyouth]

15. I saw a $1200 comforter before Christmas

Whhyyyyyyyy?

Actually, it was beautiful, I must admit. It would last about 30 seconds in our house with the cats!

[Malva Zebrina]

21. we had one of those "comforters" also when I was a child

My mother, whose roots were Czechoslovakian, called it a "pedinka" :shrug:

It was goose down filled and hand made by someone with a concern. It was really really comfy and warm too.

People actually had to make their own things like comfortors, once. Usually it was the women who sewed up these things.

[Capn Sunshine]

16. Well, if the house is 10 million

and your bathroom budget is oh....$50,000 ; THEN it fits right in!
It's economies of scale.

at this level people EXPECT that type of fixture. Kind of feeds upon itself. I know the sink of which you speak. It's become ubiquitous in this part of the world.

[Dover]

20. I have a little bit different attitude about this

First, I think most of these fancy home decor items were produced as part of the housing renaissance bubble that has not quite popped yet....there are fewer and fewer buyers for those gated community multi-million dollar homes than there were even two years ago. I do think all that square footage/real estate for a couple of people is silly and wasteful, but there are also good reasons for sinking money, if you have it, into real estate (and some states have homestead laws that prevent the gov. from taking your residence away if you have a financial crisis...so why not make it a whopper?). This is not an endorsement for the widening class gap though....like Bush's corporate buddies who are living off OUR sweat and tears.

But here's the thing.
I realize I'll probably never be able to afford many of the beautiful, handmade things out there....but I do enjoy seeing them as I would enjoy a great piece of art (that I also will never own).
There is not enough beauty in the world...aesthetically speaking...and otherwise. And if you've done any traveling, like me you might have experienced that feeling upon returning home to the States that we, as a nation, don't care nearly enough about beauty. Most of America is an eye sore, one continuous sprawling legacy of functional box homes and stores. So if we start to get a little more like Martha Stewart in our reverence for things of beauty, I think it's all for the better...even in the bathroom.
And one doesn't have to be rich to cultivate that.

On edit - and plenty of rich people have AWFUL taste...clueless. And that's just grotesque on so many levels.

[7th_Sephiroth]

22. i wouldent pay that much unless it was

hand carved jade with images of Shenlong carved into it and the faucets

[sally343434]

23. I can top that!

I suppose if you've got bottomless pockets, there's nothing "wrong" with accommodating your whims, whatever they may be, when it comes to your house.

One of the local billionaires was "remodeling" a house in an exclusive gated community. He wanted marble sinks. What to do? Fly staff to Italy to personally select a slab of marble, ship it back to the local stoneworks, and have them hand carved by their artisans. Those sinks probably ended up costing over $100,000 each, even though the same trip was used to pick marble for many of the walls, floors and stairs.

Actually, this was just a modest example of the opulence and extravagance used in this "remodeling" project, which took years to complete.

[jburton]

24. LOL!

This reminds me of my landlord a few years ago.

She bought a $6,000 picnic table for her home.

Meanwhile, our unit was in major need of better windows (which she could have written off her taxes) but it was "too expensive"

[BiggJawn]

28. 89 bucks? I got mine for $1.25 at White Castle.

Of course, I had to cut it down a bit, cut a hole for a drain and that green colour clashes and it still smells of pickles, but hey!

I have seen those glass-bowl vanity sinks. They are so cool.
My "fantasy bath" has one of those, a multi-jet "ribcage" shower, 3-passenger whirlpool tub....
My "reality bath" has a worn-out fiberglass tub-shower unit, a plain white toilet that wobbles, and the pickle-bucket sink w/a leaky Cole faucet....

[Robb]

29. Devil's advocate...

...and the perspective of lots of plumbers in the family.

I don't see why a sink can't be a work of art. I usually don't fault people for shelling out for art that moves them -- although the truth is, sadly, that most people who can afford it probably can't appreciate it.

Mrs. Robb was at a party recently for the "members" of the ski and golf club, really well-off folks who can't think of anything better to do with their money. We decided, upon recognizing that most of them are idiots, that it's too bad that the wealthy have sway over issues beyond getting wealthy. It's sort of an idiot savant thing -- they clearly are very good at accumulating wealth, but little else, and they come off as morons. :shrug:

[jmowreader]

30. Thirteen hundred for a sink? Nothing!

First, SoCalDem, I am so very happy that you could see the $1300 sink, and I fervently hope that your eye disease heals so you can see $1300 sinks for a very long time.

Incidentally, I can get you a $2000 bathroom sink, no problem. It's special order, will be drop shipped from the factory and takes six weeks to get, but if you have two grand and want to drop it on a sink, come see me. And yes, I did sell someone (a neurosurgeon) a $2000 bathroom sink. The disgusting parts of the $2000 sink: list is $2850, the faucet doesn't come with it, nor the drain, nor the vanity. However, when you order a $2000 bathroom sink, installation by three trained professionals is included. It's hand carved jade with a urethane coating for durability. Would I want it? No. I'd rather have stainless steel. But she flipped through the special order catalogs, found this sink and just had to have it. We didn't even know how to order such a thing; we called the Expo Design Center in Nashville for guidance, and the first words out of their mouth were "you sold WHAT?"

Some posters have the right idea: you will not put a $200 bathroom sink in a $2 million house.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

31. A friend of mine recently redid her bathroom on a budget

...and it's still beautiful. Her grandmother had given her a bowl with a pitcher, like you used to see on Little House on the Prairie when they didn't have sinks, and she used the bowl as a sink. They had their cousin who is a plumber/contractor fit it to their counter. It looks great. Their counter is cobalt blue tile, the bowl is a faded yellow, they got one of those cool yellow toilets from Lowe's. They tiled their shower in the same blue, but there are accents with pale yellow.
Duckie

[lumpy]

32. It is ridiculous to spend $300.00

for a lacy thong also.

[curse10]

33. Why not?

I firmly believe that if ya got it, spend it. Someone spent a lot of time designing and producing that sink. And if you really like it, buy it. It may seem frivolous, but we live in a frivolous society. :shrug: