Monday, March 30, 2009

Before & After: Bathroom Cabinet

I finally finished my master bathroom cabinet makeover last weekend (yay!). It is absolutely amazing what a little paint, hardware, and new faucets can do!

Here is the ugh-ly before:


Here is the cabinet after the faucet replacement:


And here is the "new" cabinet: Freshly painted, and new hardware installed:


It feels so much better to get ready in this room each morning. So how much did this transformation cost? Just under $26 for paint and hardware.

Paint: For this makeover, I used Benjamin Moore Aura Paint (which includes primer) in a Semi-gloss. The color is Mink. I could not more highly recommend BMoore's Aura -- I've used it in a few rooms and for a few projects and it covers better than any paint out there. Plus you can't beat Benjamin Moore's color palette. The cabinet took about three coats of paint.

Hardware: I used hardware that I purchased at Expo Design Center's liquidation sale; each knob was $1.19. And we even used one of the hardware installation templates I found last month. However, I would not recommend using the template...it's far from perfect. While it looks fine in the master bathroom and the knobs are symmetrically placed on the doors, they are not perfectly centered on each door. We had already installed one when we saw where it ended up, so we had to keep going. When we install the hardware on the kitchen cabinets this summer, I will definitely not use this template.

Question: I'm still trying to decide what to do about the quarter-rounds. Notice they're still the same "honey oak" color of the former cabinets... I opted not to paint them right now because we're going to have to get new bathroom flooring at some point (sooner than later). But what do you guys think? Should I paint the quarter rounds now or leave them as is until we replace the flooring?

5 comments:

Heidi Williams said...

we just installed handles on our kitchen cabinets this weekend and picked up this template at Ikea. (where we also got our handles) It was 2 bucks and we thought, why not?

It was awesome. SOo worth the 2 bucks.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90101778

Courtney D said...

Beautiful! You have such a great eye... the finished project is a.maze.ing!

Erica said...

Heidi, great recommendation. Erin and I have been talking about a trip to Ikea for a few weeks now. I might need to add that to my list of things to pick up while we're there. Now that Erin has finished her bathroom cabinet refinish, I am just yearning to do the same in my bathroom!

Where did you get your handles?

Lysie*Lu said...

eddie! looks fantastic! i think you should paint them white to match the lino.

Anonymous said...

Looks great. I think we almost the exact same vanity in our master bath. I'm hoping to replace it though, because I hate not having any drawers in the vanity. Hubby rigged up some shelves that attach to the inside of the cabinet doors, but they keep falling off.