Bathroom Renovation: Vanity Part 1

It is all coming together. A couple weeks ago we purchased a dresser off of Craigslist for like $50. We intend to transform it into a vanity for our bathroom. This has not been an easy process and I am forever lucky to have a husband that is so technically able to do woodworking. Here is our progress thus far.

We managed to get the vanity home in one piece. We did a ton of research on refinishing a laminate veneer as this is not like wood. You cannot sand and stain the piece. Therefore, we needed to paint which meant I had to find a color and type of paint that would go well with our rustic themed bathroom. I was for sure not sticking with this fake brown/yellow wood thing going on here.

I do not do well with dust due to some crappy lungs that I have. So I borrowed a flannel from Ryan and bought a mask for sanding. Safety first folks!

We wanted to stick with the same grit sand paper for the whole piece. We bought two types of items for sanding. The long flat pieces worked well for the drawers. I have yet to use the block shaped ones yet. We used 180 grit.

I had a variety of paint brushes since I paint as a hobby. We did buy some new ones for the project and I ended up primarily using the 1 inch brush. This allowed me to control the paint that was put on the vanity in a more detailed way.





For paint we went to Menards and I had planned on making my own chalk paint but Dutch Boy actually makes it premixed already. Chalk paint is not chalkboard paint by the way. It has a matte finish and takes de-stressing well. I wanted a light robin blue color and settled on Aqua in Dutch Boy Chalky Finish. As you can see it is a pretty light color and it already looks great.

Let the sanding begin! I went over each piece rather aggressively right away to get rid of grim and make sure each surface was smooth.  I then used a wet towel to remove any remaining dust. Wiped the surface with a dry towel so it was not wet and began with my first coat of paint.







Notice I was wearing gloves. This keeps sand dust and paint off of my hands. Easy clean up!

Above pictures are after two coats. I lightly sanded between each coat. I currently need to de-stress them and then put a coat of polyurethane on them for protection. I also need to still buy hardware.

While I was doing all this Ryan was working his magic on the guts of the vanity. Reinforcing and removing wood as needed. To fit in the plumping for the sink the two large middle drawers pictured above had to have the faces removed and kept for looks. We had to remove the drawer portion of those. Ryan is debating making the center section a door to be able to still access the plumbing instead of just gluing in those pieces. This piece is a labor of love and I promise to update you with progress as we go.

Until next time~
XoXo Emily