{Mother-In-Law's Powder Room} Part II, The Vanity

This past Winter, my husband, brother-in-law and I decided to do a complete transformation in their mom's super outdated powder room. To turn this plain ole' half-bath into a showstopper while we all three were working full time jobs was going to be  challenge. There was no better time to do it than when she was on a 15 day trip to visit friends in Florida in May. So in late Spring, we got busy with the project. The room had a couple of issues (besides just being old) that you can read about in a previous post.





Nothing but 80's builder grade standard.



So after the demo was done, (no more tilted toilet!) we painted all the walls a refreshing Icy Blue and hung beadboard from the floor to 4' up. Next step was to install the flooring. We used 12x12 travertine that we bought for $2 a sq ft. It was remnant tile that we had found, and some were better than others, so rummaging through crates to find peices that had the least imperfections was necessary. The color was a nice creamy neutral and the price was so right! (Travertine is usally upwards of $6 a sq ft.) We had to be careful on installation to use the worst pieces as the ones we would cut for the edges or around the toilet. But $60 total for natural stone floor tile instead of almost $200??? I'd say it's worth the extra effort. 

We were really torn with our vanity situation. Should we go pedestal or cabinet?

As pretty and fresh as a gleaming white pedestal can be, we didn't want to lose the only storage in the room. So a cabinet it is! The problem that we ran into was that our space was an odd 34". Now, as you might know, most stock vanity cabinets are 30" or 36". But....we couldn't shave an inch off of both sides of a 36" (although I would have given anything to do so! There were so many great options in that size!) and a 30" gave us too much unusable space. We thought our issue was solved when we found a couple options that were 32" but the quality just wasn't up to snuff. And.....with the price of a simple cabinet being about $280, and we still have to purchase a counter-top---well, the desicion was made that we would refurbish the existing piece and get a remnant granite top cut and installed. After all, there was nothing really wrong with the cabinet itself.  No major surgery needed. Just some cabinet paint in a dark color and--

Good As New!



Let's just paint it and get a new granite countertop!



The cabinet shell. I took the doors off  and painted them in the other room.

The cabinet was pretty easy to paint. I used the Rust-Oleum cabinet kit that has everything included in it. It has a solvent that you wipe on the cabinets and doors before you paint, and then gives you easy to follow instructions on how to paint the doors so that you don't get any brush strokes showing. Then you paint on a protective gloss. I've heard from other people that you can just use regular paint to do cabinets, but I wanted them to look great for a long time, and not have any paint flakeage (did I make up a word?). In short, I didn't want to do a janky job of it. And plus, The kit has enough paint to do a small kitchen's worth of cabinets, so we can save it for the next room to spruce up!



You have the paint tinted when you purchase it. All of the color options are listed on the box.

We had a remnant piece of granite cut to fit and installed by a local company called Bathrooms Plus Kitchens. Anyone living in the East Valley, I totally recommend them. They did a lovely job. Their guy was on time, in and out, told us everything we needed to know about the care of the granite, and left us with a little folder containing warranty and care instructions. Thanks guys! You couldn't have made it easier!

Here's a pic of the finished, well sort-of finished product. We still have to mount the door hardware, but you get the idea....





You're also getting a sneak peak look at the gorgeous tile....Lucky you!



There are just a few more details I'd like to show before I reveal to you the completed project, and the super fun video of Mom-In-Law seeing the powder room for the first time..... So....stay tuned!