Bathroom Vanity Makeover
/I hate this bathroom.
It’s so ugly. This is on the lower level of my house and really just serves as a powder room, though it does have a shower stall with a rainfall head that no one has ever used, though I did learn that one needs to turn the shower on periodically to run some water into the drain so that it doesn’t evaporate and leave the lower level smelling like swamp ass.
It has these ugly “hollywood” vanity lights that I will eventually replace. It’s also a little odd in that it has a legit single bowl stainless kitchen sink with a full pull down faucet. Not sure why, but whatever. The little backsplash tile doesn’t even match the countertop, which is just an ugly laminate, and the vanity is meh, just your average oak-looking wood vanity. The trim has clearly been chewed, I can only assume someone used to lock a dog in here, which is just awful because it’s super small and there’s no windows, so poor thing probably just wanted to get out.
Friday at about 8pm I decided I should do something about this.
So, I scrubbed the vanity and countertops down, gave everything a sanding, taped everything off and started by priming the vanity. I didn’t have the good primer that I wanted to use on the countertop and tile (this would be my first attempt at painting tile), so I figured I’d run out Saturday morning and grab the primer from the hardware store.
By about midnight on Friday, I had the first coat of black on the vanity, drawer fronts and door.
Then this happened in the wee hours of Saturday, and I couldn’t get out until my plow guy came.
So, while I waited to be plowed out, I got another coat of black on the vanity. While that dried, I ran out to get the good primer (INSL-X Stix) and grabbed some new hardware for the drawers and door.
By the end of Saturday, I had the countertop and tile primed (2 coats) and the first coat of white chalk paint on the countertop and tile. Sunday morning, I put down another coat of the white chalk paint and turned to my sample boards to figure out how I wanted to do this countertop.
My first idea was to make it look like carrara marble. I watched a bunch of videos and tried out some veining and sort of figured it out, but wasn’t confident that I could make it look right. So, I decided to just get a layer of “scumble” on with a light gray acrylic and a sea sponge to see how things looked.
I actually kind of liked it like this. I felt like if I made any attempt to do any veining, I was just going to make it worse, so I let this dry and then went over it again with a little bit lighter gray on the sponge to blend/soften it a little bit and then decided that was that and let it dry.
I used General Finishes High Performance clear satin top coat on the vanity, but used Minwax Polycrylic in satin on the countertop and tile (I would have preferred to use GF on everything, but General Finishes specifically warns not to use their High Performance on white/light colors since it may yellow). I swapped out the hardware, and I just need to re-caulk where the tile meets the counter and this is done!
Not bad for a weekend transformation!