The bathroom cabinetry was also condemned and removed, so the sinks went with it. I am not going through another bout of carpentry mess when the bathroom plumbing gets its update, which won’t be until I have recovered from the current efforts,

Yes, all the cabinetmakers are Syrian. Waseem is from Damascus, and grew up in Dubai. The other guys are from all over the Syrian diaspora, but they all speak the same variant of Arabic. Waseem calls all of them “brother”, which is a Muslim thing. Soldiers do the same nowadays, I guess because their deployments are so often in majority-Muslim countries.