Read on for the tutorial for how we transformed our dated vanity with noting but paint, and saved ourselves hundreds!
Before I get into this post – let me first say that we have moved! In about three weeks, we fixed up our house, listed it, sold it, packed, and moved from Arizona to New York. While I was eight months pregnant. With a three year old.
It’s nothing short of a miracle. While we’re getting settled into our new house and expecting baby #2 to arrive any day, I’ll share a few of the projects we took on that helped us sell our house for about $30,000 more than we’d originally anticipated. This vanity makeover was Priority No. 1.
The Before
When we first bought the house, that hideous tile topped my list of “things to get rid of asap.” But as life goes, it just never happened. We painted almost the whole house, inside and out, before doing something about the vanity!
Even before Brian was offered the job in New York, we knew that if we were going to sell our house, we’d need to update this bathroom. Bathrooms and kitchens, those are the places to invest. However, we didn’t have much to invest at this point. So this makeover needed to happen as cheaply as possible.
We looked into replacing the entire vanity and mirrors, which would be preferable. But I read in a blog post about house staging about people painting their ugly kitchen tile backsplash, and that gave me the idea – could we paint this ugly tile countertop? It’s a porous tile, not like porcelain or sealed ceramic. If it could be painted, using paint we already had, and we painted the cupboards below, we could do the update for just the cost of new hardware.
We decided it was worth experimenting with. After all, it couldn’t get any worse!
1. Paint the Countertop
Prime first, then paint with a high gloss white. We used the same white paint we used on our fireplace (Polar Bear, by Behr). The gleaming white countertop turned out so much better than I even imagined!
2. Paint the Cupboards
Although we didn’t know it yet, this was a foreshadowing of the project to come – painting our kitchen cabinets.
- Remove the doors and all the hardware,
- Follow by sanding,
- and add a coat of primer. Sanding and priming the cupboard doors was my job as the pregnant one – I could just sit on a five gallon bucket and not move around too much.
- Finish with paint. We had a can of navy blue paint that we’d bought for the entry way, but it turned out to be too light for that wall and so it just sat in our garage. It actually turned out beautifully with the aqua wall.
Brian handled painting the kick plate under the cupboard. And sitting in the tiny chair to paint the doors, while we binged “This Old House.”
3. Final Steps
Modern gold hardware finished the look for the updated vanity. We bought these “bronze” drawer pulls from Home Depot. It cost about $24 – and that was all we had to spend on this entire transformation!
Touch up the edges where the countertop meets the wall, and caulk around the sink. That’s it!
If we still owned the house, someday I’d love to have updated the vanity entirely, the mirrors, the tile floor, and of course, our weird dropped shower. But to sell the house, we had to pick and choose our projects. For $24 in hardware and a few hours on some week nights and a weekend, this experiment in painting tile countertop paid off!
What do you think of the transformation? Let me know in the comments below!
