Master Bathroom Redesign on a Budget: PART 1

Hi friends!

I thought I would officially outline everything I’ve done to our master bathroom so far. It’s been a lot of work, but it’s largely cosmetic and not super technical. I would say this makeover was labor intensive but not hard, if that makes any sense?

First things first, here are some photos of the bathroom from the real estate listing when we bought it one year ago. Very tasteful, lovely in finishes, but just not my style.

The first order of business when we moved in was to paint the bathroom a different color, as we did with the rest of the house. No offense to yellow lovers out there, but this mustard did not speak to me, and it kind of clashed with the tile they chose. So I went with my trusty Agreeable Gray from Sherwin Williams, because I knew I liked it and it was a warm enough gray to work with the tile.

For MONTHS the brown of the vanity bothered me. I’m just not a fan of brown. It has its place, but it is not something I like for huge pieces. Particularly this brown… it had an orangey undertone that I had to banish. SO, I decided to paint it, because as with everything I do… it was going to be BETTER, if not perfect, and I was OK with that. PAINT IS YOUR FRIEND… don’t be afraid of it.

Please excuse the disaster that is the inside of my bathroom cabinets, but I’m all for keeping it real on here. Are the inside of anyone’s bathroom cabinets pretty? Not really. #reallife

The first order of business was to take off the existing hardware, take off the doors and wipe everything down with a good cleaner. We put all of the hinges in baggies with their screws and LABELED EVERYTHING. The doors were already drilled, so you don’t want to screw up the existing hardware. We went with a “Left Side, Left Cabinet” sort of system so we knew which hardware went to which door. We also used sticky notes to identify the doors and drawers so we knew where to put them back. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

I decided to use Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Pure to do these cabinets. I liked the limited prep-work needed for this paint, because this particular cabinet had had a pretty thick lacquer/poly finish on it, and I was afraid of the work that would be needed to sand it away. I wiped everything off with a good degreaser/cleaner called TSP Substitute before I painted. Having a clean surface is essential. With that, I started painting!

I set all of the doors and drawer fronts on card tables in our upstairs landing area. I highly recommend these cool little tripod stands when painting two-sided things. They are a lifesaver and made things go much quicker. I used a flexible brush that gets in all of the nooks and crannies and tried to do light coats so I wouldn’t get drips. I did one side of the doors first, and then I went on to paint the actual cabinet base.

Guys, this project took FOUR COATS of paint. FOUR. It took a long time… but luckily this paint dries really quickly, so I was able to do at least two coats in one day. After everything was painted I sanded it all really lightly with a fine grit of sand paper to smooth down edges. This ended up distressing some of the edges, but I actually kind of like how it looked imperfect and had some character.

After sanding everything down, I coated it all with a polyurethane to keep it super protected. I used General Finishes Top Coat in Semi Gloss and gave everything two coats. Most Annie Sloan projects use a wax to finish things, but I went with a poly because our bathroom gets a lot of wear and tear, and I wanted it to really hold up. After the coat of poly, we reassembled everything and put the vanity back together. The light shades of the old lights were REALLY yellow and icky from the previous wall paint, which appeared to have been sprayed on without protecting the light fixture shades. I actually cleaned them off with nailpolish remover, of all things, because I wanted them to be brighter and whiter while I had to live with them.

Stay tuned for my next post, where I take this new blank canvas and make it even more fun!