Budget Guest Bathroom Update
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Budget Guest Bathroom Update
I told you during The Hexagon Kitchen that I had a minor obsession with, ahem, hexagons. See, I wasn’t lying. In this bathroom I went BOLD in black, and I’m in love.
This tiny bathroom didn’t need a ton of work, just a little facelift. This bathroom is our guest bathroom, so we didn’t want to put too much money into it as we’re saving our pennies for our master bathroom.
I did splurge, however, on said hexagons.
B E F O R E
The “BEFORE” was simple.
A sealed cement floor, a small grey vanity and matching mirror, and a toilet. No frills.
I decided to keep the vanity and paint it white. I am considering painting my island cabinets an accent color myself as a DIY so I wanted to get some practice painting cabinets to see if I would be willing to hire myself for the job, consider the guest vanity my practice project.
T H E P R O C E S S
First let’s talk about my favorite part of the project. The tile! These sweet beauties were $0.99 from Lowes, and I used about 150. This was the splurge of the project and it was worth it. We laid out the tile to see if we would have any obnoxiously small pieces around the edges. Of course our walls weren’t in a perfect square so the tiles got smaller as they reached one corner of the room. We drew lines with a wax pencil on the tiles that we We used a small 1/4” square notched trowel, light grey mortar (since we were planning on using light grey grout), and mortar for small tiles.
As far as the vanity goes, this was my most time-consuming project.
The vanity had ridges on the front and side that made it a real pain to sand and paint. I started off using my orbital sander and gave the vanity a good rough-up with 120 grit. This is the only round of sanding I did. You just want to rough up the surface to give your new paint something to adhere to. I then used a sanding block to get in the tiny ridges that continued to curse me throughout the project.
After the sanding was complete, I wiped the fine dust off with a tack cloth, and then primed the cabinets using a multipurpose primer. That dried, and I did a second coat of primer. Oh, make sure to sand lightly in between priming coats for sweet smoothness. I had cabinet paint handy, and used a foam cabinet roller to apply the paint. Cabinet-specific paint has a little more of an oil-type consistency so it’ll settle nicer and won’t leave brush or roller strokes.
I should have laid the vanity down on it’s back to prime and paint, wait until the front was completely done, then lay the cabinet on its side and prime and paint each side respectively. I left the vanity upright and did all the sides and my paint ended up dripping down into the small corner crevices as it dried. Not too big of a deal, just annoying.
Of course, I spray painted the cabinet hardware black using Matte Black spray paint after a quick sand with a 120 grit sanding block.
The mirror got some love too. It came with the vanity and was painted the same grey color. All it took was a quick sand with the 120 grit orbital sander and it got stained, in “Provincial” by Miniwax.
This was my second time doing shiplap.
The first time I did shiplap was in my entryway nook. I originally thought I should just shiplap the wall behind the vanity, but I knew doing it around the whole room would look better. It was more effort, but worth it. I used cheap $30 plywood from Home Depot, and had them cut it into 8” strips. Smaller 4” strips would have looked too busy for such a small bathroom. I needed 4 boards for this project. I didn’t sand down the boards that well, so knots and ridges were visible, giving it a more rustic look in the end.
I primed the boards before attaching them to the wall, and when I painted them, it got tiny white specks of paint on my black tile, so I should have painted them before nailing them to the wall. I used my cordless Dewalt finishing nail gun, then filled in the nail holes with wood putty, then did touch up paint. I caulked the corners, and added a 1x2 piece of trim at the top of the shiplap to finish it off. Overall, I think it came out great. Still loving the shiplap look. The white and black contrast really worked well in that small space.
After I saw how much I loved the matte black light, I did spend money on a new black faucet. I just couldn’t have the look be incomplete with a chrome faucet-ugh. Spent maybe $150 on that.
The existing vanity top was a cultured marble top. It had some discoloration and minor surface scratches visible. I got some fine 1,000 grit sand paper and did a wet sand (make sure it’s wet sandpaper), then I used a marble polish to make it nice and shiny. It totally gave the vanity top a new life, I was totally surprised at how well it turned out.
I got a $10 light on clearance and spray painted it matte black. . What a score.
I love spray painting things matte black, it gives boring items such an elevated look, and it’s really easy to do. I just gave the light a quick sand (although you don’t have to), and put a coat of spray paint on.
Still wet, it dried matte black.
I was originally going to put a shelf on the left of the vanity, but then I stumbled across this adorbs blanket ladder at TJ MAXX, and it went perfectly in the space. It added a nice warmth with the natural wood. I popped up a picture that I had, and voila! The guest bathroom was complete.