Friday, July 1, 2011

lisa's bathroom

over a year ago my seester decided that she wanted to re-do her bathroom, wanted to give it an updated spring-y color scheme and start the process for giving her whole house a good freshening up.  it started with these towels from target and a supercute penguin trashcan.  based on these towels i removed what was left of the wallpaper border, painted the bottom half of the walls that great turquoise color, got a couple of cute rugs, a lime green toothbrush holder and replaced the broken mini-blinds with light and airy white curtains, super easy makeover, right? 
easy it was, until she mentioned that she wanted some new, better storage.  dun dun duh.... (enter creepy graveyard music here).  there was plenty of room for a fun cabinet and the wheeled plastic drawer bins just weren't cutting it. there was a lot of searching, lots of custom plans designed and, it seemed, lots more cost than she planned.  any idea why someone would think it perfectly okay to charge $500 for a simple wood box that we have to put together ourselves and then change the color of  (yes, we could have left the super-expensive one white but that's just plain silly since it would almost immediately get dusty or yellowed from excess moisture and three girls all sharing a bathroom)? me neither.

thanks to our habitat re-store, lisa didn't have to fork over anywhere near that amount of cash, this beauty was available for only $65!!!! it's actual wood, was in great condition, and just ugly enough that it had been waiting several months to come to the right place so the original $90 asking price was marked down. the only downside was that we really wanted some baskets and the current door layout wasn't working... what's a girl to do?
duh! flip it over and remove a door leaving the shelves available for baskets! maybe that part was obvious to ya'll but it took me a few extra minutes to figure it out, i originally was planning on filling and re-drilling the holes so that the handles could be a single glass knob in the center of the door, guess which option was cheaper and easier!  after that it was time to sand, prime and paint the cabinet.

as you can see in the next photo the cabinet got some nice additions along with a good coat of primer.  first, a top made from spare mdf and some feet made from 4x4 blocks that we had in the scrap pile made it look a whole lot less like a kitchen cabinet and a whole lot more like an actual piece of furniture.
i primed the interior white and the outside grey, i had most of the primer and the sandpaper already so this part was pretty close to free... fyi, i thought painting bright pink over grey would be much easier than over white because i had issues with the white bleeding through the pink on the doors, turns out, it was equally as difficult but with 3 coats it turned out the same color and i'd just suggest using whatever primer u have around.
i put the shelves back in that came with the cabinet (i did pick up new shelf supports though because the previous ones were super gross) using the baskets we purchased at pier1 as a guide for spacing (they were a perfect fit by very happy coincidence) and it was looking good 

i replaced the doors and was amazed at how different it looked but then immediately started to worry that it was a little too pink (not that lisa would think it was, she could have an entirely pink room and still want more pink).
once we had it in the room with the antique trays lisa bought it was perfect.

now all we have left to do in there is get some art for the wall above the cabinet and maybe replace some light fixtures... (and maybe a better photo, that's what i get for forgetting a camera)  i hope you like it!

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