DIY Painted Bathroom Cabinets

Happy Monday, everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! If you follow me on Instagram than you might of seen my post of getting some cable channels, so this weekend was spent watching a lot of HGTV and also exploring some new areas in downtown Grand Rapids. It was really nice getting out of the house despite the cold temperatures! This weekend, we also made more progress on our bathroom makeover. It is not completed, because I'm still being indecisive on the shower curtain and artwork I want, but besides that all the big projects in this room are complete! The largest transformation in this room is definitely from painting the cabinets, so today I will be showing you how I painted them and tips and tricks I learned along the way to make the process go more smoothly. 

Here is what they vanity looked like when we moved into the house. It is a light honey colored wood that made the space look a little dated in my opinion. I wanted the space to look light and bright so I 

decided to paint it white.  

The first thing that I did was remove the vanity doors and drawers, and cleaned them off thoroughly. The family that lived here before us had 5 children, mainly girls, so there was a lot of nail polish on the cabinets. Luckily I was able to remove it with a little nail polish remover. After I cleaned them, I then taped the walls and floor surrounding the vanity so that no primer or paint would get on the walls. After I had taped the area up, I began to prime the vanity with the Valspar All Purpose primer and sealer. This was my first time using primer so it definitely was a learning process. Primer is thicker than paint and does not apply the same way. I was afraid of applying too thick of a coat of it because I didn't want it to dry clumpy. What I learned though is that you WANT a nice full coverage application of this product. In areas where there was not full coverage, the wood color showed through when painting. That said, make sure you apply a nice coat of primer to the cabinets before painting!

 Also excuse the mess within inside the cabinet, I didn't feel like removing it:)

I primed the cabinets and drawers in my basement on cardboard. After I gave everything one application of primer I let it dry over night. Looking back I should of probably done a second coat of primer, especially on the side of the vanity, but I ended up only doing one coat of primer. If you give a full coverage application of primer during the first coat, a second coat wouldn't be necessary.

The way that I applied the primer is by using a small roller brush like seen below. In the small areas where I couldn't reach with this brush I used a paint brush, but I used this everywhere else in order to minimize being able to see paint brush strokes. 

After I primed and let it dry overnight, I then went ahead and painted the vanity, cabinets, and drawers with white paint. I used paint that we already owned so I mixed Behr Swiss Coffee (which is an off white color) and Sherwin Williams un-tinted basic paint in bright white. The only reason I made my own combination is because I didn't want to have to buy new paint, so you could use any white paint that you like. During the painting process, I also used the small foam roller brush for the majority of it and used a paint brush where the foam brush didn't fit. I ended up applying two coats of paint on everything, and had to put an additional third coat on the side of the vanity. That third coat could of easily of been avoided had I applied a more generous amount of primer.  After all the painting was dry, I tried adding Polycrylic to act as a sealer to the paint. BIG MISTAKE. The idea was good, but polycrylic is really hard to apply right and left some streak marks. I only gave everything one application of it, and luckily I was able to sand some of the streaks down. That said, if you paint your own cabinets I'd advise that you don't use polycrylic on the cabinets. Just use primer and paint! We were also working on adding backsplash tiles at the same time, so the only photo I have during this step is when a lot of it got covered to work on that project. Details on how to add backsplash will up later this week. 

After everything was dried we then added the hardware that we got from Ikea. It was not my top choice at first, but I ended up really liking how it looked because it complimented the new faucet very well. From start to finish, it took me 4 evenings after work to finish the vanity. This is definitely a manageable and easy project to tackle in a short time. Just make sure to use plenty of primer!!

So what did you think? Easy enough for you do? The white paint gave this room the light and brightness that I as looking for and I love how it turned out. If I forgot to leave anything out about this project or if you have any questions regarding it, please ask away in the comments section below and I'll get back to you as soon as possible!

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