Updating an Old Bathroom Vanity

As much as I love the colour pink, it’s not the kind of colour you want to see in you main bath.

So many of us have builder grade bathrooms that are fully functional and practical but yet lack basic appeal.

If spending $5K+ is not in the books for you, what can you do to give new life to an old bathroom?

Create a new colour palette and make a few minor adjustments!

Now—of course—if you have hideous coloured tiles from the 1930’s then I’m sorry, not even new paint will help you. However, if you do have a neutral tile similar to what you see in my main bath then there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

My plan for this bathroom is to do a classic black and white theme. By covering the pink walls with white paint, all that dated wall and shower tile recedes into the background, like magic!  It a great way to camouflage the problem areas and create focal points with colour (in my case—using black).

Moving on to the vanity, I begin by removing the pink countertop and cabinet hardware.  I’m going to be re-positioning the holes for the hardware so I fill them prior to priming the unit.

Painting everything in its place, I used the colour Graphite (1603) from Benjamin Moore, which by the way is one of my favourite shades of black. I would describe it as a chalky black. It has a bit of a grey undertone to it.

You probably already know this but as a reminder, it’s super important to use paint specifically for furniture as you don’t want anything that will chip or peel overtime especially with bathroom humidity. I used Benjamin Moore ADVANCE Waterborne Interior Alkyd Paint for this project.

As for the new hardware, we re-positioned the holes to the middle of the cabinet. I had some brass round pulls that I bought for my IKEA hack a while back which we never ended up using. I figured this would add a little charm to these traditional cabinet doors.

Since we also got rid of the pink countertop, we replaced it with this faux marble laminate. I used a high quality formica laminate from Belanger Laminates which almost looks like the real thing. There are also other great options such as this.

Last but not least, the hubs installed a new sink and faucet. You can easily use your old sink and faucet if you really wanted to keep costs low but since the vanity is the only place we are really spending any money, we decided to switch the fixtures as well.

We also framed out the mirror using 1″ x 2″ pine to hide those awful mirror clips. I’ve used the same method from our bathroom makeover in our previous home. This really is the fastest and easiest way to transform a builder grade mirror. More on that to come.

Bathroom upgrades can be tough but they don’t always have to be expensive. Stay tuned as we continue to revamp this bathroom.

UPDATE: Check out how we refreshed our bathroom floors for less than $2.00 and view the full makeover reveal here!