House of Views: vanity

For those who do not know, I am in the middle of a bathroom redo on a budget. This is our main bathroom on our upper level of our home. My budget is right around $250. It’s gonna be tight, but fingers crossed, hoping I can stick to it. This may or my not include a new floor Winking smile

First things first…painting the yellow/orange oak vanity:

ALL of the wood work in our house is this color. While I am blessed to have such a nice house, I do not love this wood tone. I would like to paint it all, but that is a HUGE job, so, I will just start with the vanity.

I choose the color Kendall Charcoal by Benjamin Moore. I came across a kitchen on The Inspired Room, and I LOVED her colors she used in her kitchen. I thought it was a great starting point and inspiration for something different in this bathroom.

I had a couple hiccups along the way. My first thought was to use Benjamin Moore Advance paint, because I have heard rave reviews on painting cabinets and trim with this. It is a hybrid paint that is part oil, part water. It is also self leveling. The paint cleans up with soap and water but hardens and has the durability of oil based paint.

But lazy ‘ol me wanted to short cut and thought, “Hey, I will make some homemade chalk paint with this color and then it will not need any prep.”

UM, NO! I either didn’t mix the chalk paint strong enough to adhere to the glossy finish of the stock cabinets or something, because when I tried to polycrylic them, the brush took the homemade chalk paint right off the wood Sad smile

So I went back to my original plan and went out and bought some of the fabulous Benjamin Moore Advance paint in Kendall Charcoal. DUH, I should have done this in the first place. It is such a great paint. Easy clean up, slower dry time compared to a latex so you have more time to work with it, but not too slow where there can be paint sag like some oil based paints can cause because they dry so slow.

Here is an example of paint sag:

(image source)

So far I am loving the result, even though I have a ways to go on this entire project.

Currently I am on the hunt for some beautiful hardware for the vanity, it never had any. This girl needs some jewelry!

Let me leave you with an AFTER picture of the vanity. Do not mind the messy paint on the back wall..all those walls will be painted a different color, this is why I started with the vanity, because I knew it would be messy and I do not tape anything off.

This color is actually a little darker in person than the monitor shows. The flash washed it out a bit, and there is no natural light in this bathroom, plus I am a total amateur in the photography department.

Next step: Paint walls Polished Grey by Glidden, and change out the light fixture above the mirror.

Here is a sneak peek at what the light will look like(there will be a couple tweaks).