oh, sailor, I am soooo sorry to hear this. I can so totally sympathize. We paid a lot for our custom cabinetry in our master bathroom, and we, too, were really dissatisfied. In our case, the issues were not as bad, or more fixable. The vanity itself has sides that are a lighter wood, side drawer slides rather then bottom slides, and the drawer wood isn't well-matched for grain as I'd hoped. However, none of those things is explicitly WRONG (aside from the drawer glides, I'd specified under-mount), just "not as nice as I expected"... so we let those go. The cabinetmaker was a really nice young man with a sweet family and we liked him, so we just decided it was "good enough". The small wall cabinet over the toilet, though, had the shelf holes mis-drilled so that the shelves were crooked. We DID make him take that back are rebuild it for us, at his own expense. Assuming your cabinetmaker was made clearly aware of things like not running into the window trim, toekick heater, etc before he started, then he should fix them at his own expense. He took his own measurements, he wasn't working solely from your plans. If some of those issues were vague, and you just assumed he knew, but weren't super clear, then he might have reason to resent redo. (On our master vanity, I'd just "assumed" that the cabinetmaker would use matching wood for the sides, and try to match the wood grain on the drawers. It seemed obvious enough that I didn't think to specify. But since I hadn't, I didn't feel I could fault him too badly. Especially since our design was pretty unusual for this area -so spare and modern- and he had only built traditional cabinetry before...) Anyway, my heart goes out to you. I totally understand the renovation fatigue and depression. You plan and plan for so long... making sure every detail is thought out and carefully designed, and then you just want to give up when these sorts of issues arise. I don't know if you followed our master bathroom reno but it dragged into months and months with all the problems we had. Hang in there, it'll be finished soon, and you'll enjoy it for a long time!

The tile should finally be in on Monday and installation will begin. Hooray! We've been concentrating so much on the kitchen, that we're a bit overdue to choose a bathroom vanity. The plans call for a toe kick heater. My question is whether we need to purchase a vanity cabinet that has a toe kick or if we can use one with feet. Our choices are limited for the size we need (preferably under 30 inches) with a toe kick built-in. Thanks. (I'll cross post on the heating/air conditioning forum.)

I think the installation you're proposing is quite flawed, but you know that already. With zero insulation in a 2x4 cavity, the heater will be sending some heat into the room and some heat into the outdoors through the exterior wall and sheathing/siding. If the temp setting/thermostat is on the heater itself, I could see a worst-case scenario of the heater turning on, heating the air around it to the temp set point, then turning off. With there being no insulation in the wall, the heater will quickly cool and reach the low t-stat trigger setting, turning the heater on again. The cycle will repeat itself and you could end up with a heater that continually short-cycles on and off. Could you "box" the stud bay out a little into the room, then insulate the back of the stud bay? This would essentially allow the heater to be set a couple of inches into the stud bay and a couple of inches into the room. A couple of inches of rigid foam insulation in the back of the stud cavity would be best, polyiso is R7 per inch, two inches would give you R14, 1-1/2" about R10. You'd probably need something between the insulation and the heater, something like a skin of drywall. Or a foil-facing on the insulation might work too, it depends on the heater and how much, if any, the heater need to be isolated. Just an idea.

I am not familiar with the baseboard you describe. I feel it must be electrically-powered. Please post a link. It could be a nice electric heater or it could be just marketing hype. Heat generated by electricity can be delivered in several ways. A little blower in the toe-kick or ceiling-mounted heaters delivers hot air. With the electric baseboard, you get natural convection (no blower) and radiant heat. (Radiant is mostly what you feel standing next to a fire your the side facing the fire feeling very warm while the other side can be quite cool.) The last way is by conduction which is the first step in how the floor heater would work. It is hard to say which is more efficient. Electricity conversion to heat is all 100% efficient, but some ways can make you feel warmer with less power depending on how they are being used. When revising the AC did you consider increasing the supply to the bathroom? I guess you just had a replacement system plugged into your existing ducts. Your projects sound familiar to me in my S. Louisiana home. AC is done. Need to do the roof and insulation. Need to take out a pool and regrade the yard. Need to rebuild garage walls. Need to fix the floors. .... It will never end.