Vain For Our Vanity

After a week or so of work and a few weeks of blogging about it, we are finally wrapping up our master bathroom vanity update.  Really, the bathroom happens to be off the master bedroom but it is the main bathroom for the whole house due to the circular floor plan so an update was much needed.  Just to refresh your memory, this is what the bathroom looked like when we first moved in a year ago:

We believe the bathroom was part of a 1970s addition on the back of the house, evident by the beige countertop, floors and outlet covers as well as gold and silver mixed accents.  Our first task was replacing the beige countertop with a "new" (thanks to a great Habitat ReStore find) white one as well as new two handle faucet.

Andy then added a frame around the existing mirror from salvaged barn wood.

Per one of our marriage deals, I come in next with paint.  I took off the doors and hardware and quickly primed the vanity cabinet.  I planned from the beginning of this remodel to use the same color paint I used to paint the built-in porch benches- a light grey.  I really liked how the benches turned out and thought it would be perfect in the bathroom. I only had a spit of paint leftover so I knew needed to get another quart but luckily, I had extra time to work due to an especially long nap time that I decided to put as much on as I could over the primer to get an idea of how it would look.

The picture is not a great representation, but the color didn't work at all.  It blended into the countertop and floors too much and didn't give any visual interest to the vanity.  Since the toilet faces the vanity and therefore, gets a lot of viewing time, I knew it wouldn't work.  Despondent, I grabbed my paint chips to try to find something that would work.  Brown, dark grey, purple.. I was all over the board.  I checked our leftover paint in the basement to see if there was anything that would work and found Puddle (see spotlight on the can and hear angels singing)... a Behr paint that we used for the playroom walls.  And, more angels singing... quarter of the can left.

Much better!  Oddly enough, the color looks more brown in the playroom and more grey in the bathroom but it works.  It is a great, rich color that makes the white countertop really standout.  To finish off the vanity, I purchased three new drawer pulls from Anthropologie.  Combined, they cost the same as the countertop but I think make the vanity more unique.

The final breakdown of cost for the project is as follows:

White Countertop from Habitat Restore: $25
Faucet from Habitat Restore: $15
Miscellaneous plumbing for faucet: $10
Wood frame around mirror: Free (reclaimed lumber from Andy's workshop tear-down)
Door knobs from Anthropologie:  $25
Paint for vanity: Free (extra from playroom)

Total:  $75

No need for magazines in the bathroom anymore- we can gaze lovingly at the "new" vanity for as long as our bathroom needs last.  Will we replace the light above the mirror?  On my next trip to the Lowes at Rochester.  Will we update the floor?  Probably down the line.  Will we paint the trim and closet doors white?  Definitely as soon as I work my way around to it.  But for now, we can appreciate one job done!  Time to bust out the champagne.