From Shabby to Chic

Well, it seems like I am taking on more and more projects around the house!  We are so close to being "done" with the things that we want to do right now that I can taste it!  More news to come about the big hole in our wall, which is now nicely painted and looking fabulous, if I do say so myself.

Anywho, this post is all about how I refurbished our UGLY vanity in the upstairs guest bathroom.  See it was straight up out of the 80's-when this house was built.  I wasn't crazy about the wood, or the counter top, or the sink faucet for that matter.  So, I decided to re-do the vanity and just buy a new faucet instead of replacing the whole thing-which costs a lot of dinero $$$-so booo to that.

This is how the shabby vanity looked before I got started (note, those are still the ugly floors, so you know this picture is a little bit dated)...

I know what you're thinking...why in the world would you want to paint and cover up that lovely wood-baha NOT!  So, I got started right away.  First I took off the two doors and all the hardware-except the toilet paper holder bolts.  Why?  Because I'm lazy-don't judge.  After everything was removed, I lightly sanded the whole vanity, including doors, with my palm sander-every girl needs one, seriously- I. LOVE. MINE.  After the sanding I wiped all the dust away and put 2 coats of primer.  Some people only use 1 coat of primer, but I find that it makes the paint easier and requires less applications if the primer is a little thicker.  Some might disagree, but I didn't see anybody offering to help me complete this task-so my thinking is clearly correct.  After the primer dried, I added a coat of paint-like so...

  The color looks super yellow in the pictures, but the bottom picture is actually more accurate.  This might be because I just snap these pictures with my iPhone...so much for the new iPhone having the 'best' camera like they advertise.  I definitely need another form of camera.  Oh well.

Then the fun part began.  I got out my palm sander, again, and just sanded the freshly painted vanity.  I sanded and distressed the thing to death.  I kept putting the doors side be side to make sure that I had them 'aged' in different spots, so it didn't match exactly.  I mean, what old stuff has marks in the exact same place?  Then I rubbed some old stain that we had left from the home office transformation on the doors and vanity.  I would rub it on, then use another cloth to rub it off.  I kept repeating this until I thought it looked 'aged' enough.  When I was done, I just attached all the hardware again and BAM-new vanity.

I like to refer to this bathroom as shabby chic room because I think the shower curtain kinda gives off that vibe-hence the reason I wanted a distressed/aged looking vanity.

There are lots of other things going on at our house...Brad went out of town for a weekend, and in that short amount of time I managed to repaint the downstairs, started to repaint the trim downstairs, bought a vintage stereo to house our cable box, and all sorts of other fun things.  More pictures and posts to come soon!  I'd be dangerous if he was gone a whole week.....(insert evil laugh)