Bathroom Part 5: A bathroom vanity

Long post ahoy! I knew immediately that I wanted to replace the vanity in the bathroom. It was a bit wonky, and the sink was like, weirdly scraped and scarred, and it was at the very low end of vanity height. And I am a tall person. But pre-fab bathroom vanities are expensive! and they all kind of look the same. So my mom went down a pinterest rabbit hole for me and. . . I diy'ed a bathroom vanity. There's a ton of diys on the internet for doing this. Basically: you take a piece of furniture you like and you put a sink - usually a vessel sink - on top and do up your plumbing and boom. Vanity, on the cheap. (well, sort of). 

I knew I wanted a dresser - something about the width of a double vanity. I found a dresser on craigslist in Minneapolis for $40. It was white with silver hardware. I bought Fusion mineral paint in mustard and deconstructed the dresser. There were drawer slides that needed fixing, and the silver hardware had been spraypainted silver and honestly looked plastic even though they are definitely brass. I dumped the hardware in paint thinner and fixed the drawer slides. The drawers were all fitted with stops, keeping them from pulling all the way out, which I removed. One side would need to have drawers reconfigured to allow for plumbing, and it made the most sense for the drawers to be able to pull out for access to the drain/water lines. I gave everything a light sanding, and then painted the dresser. I gave it about 5 coats, mostly because everything I read said "light coats" and I may have been too careful to follow that instruction. (My mom recently used some of this paint to repaint some furniture and it only took her like, 2 coats.) 

I moved the dresser to Santa Fe, and it hung out in the garage while I waited for the weather to warm up. I wanted to put a dark wax on the dresser - there's a cool wheat detail on the center top drawer that I wanted to bring out, plus it just makes for nice depth. I learned that I am very mediocre at applying wax! But I only had to sand out and repaint a small part of the dresser, so . . . whatever, I guess. 

Then I applyed a polycrylic to the top, where the sink will go. All the blogs I read recommended a polycrylic and not leaving it with just paint, or just wax. So I put on five coats of poly on the top of the dresser. It goes on sort of milky white and then dries clear, and a new coat can be applied in 2 hours. Given that I live in a desert, I think things were generally dry to the touch in about 15 minutes and probably I could have just done the next coat then, but I did wait the full two hours each time. (In retrospect, given how quickly things dried, I totally should have been sanding between coats!)

Let me pause here and note that I learned a valuable lesson that made me feel not super bright: DO NOT apply your polycrylic on top of wax. Just don't. Basically the entire polycrylic top peeled off in sheets within I would guess 3 months of installation and now I need to . . . remove the sink, sand down the top, repaint the top, and re-apply the polycrylic. So, you know, do as I say, not as I do.

I spent the better part of an afternoon testing out where I would put the sink. Wait OMG y'all this sink. I'm very pleased. First off - it's kind of delightfully enormous. And it's matte white. And it's almost sculptural?? IDK it is definitely the coolest bathroom sink I've ever seen and I am DELIGHTED with it. Tentative sink and faucet placement:

 

And then I paused everything while I dealt with the tile problem that had just occurred to me. I wound up being sans bathroom sink for a little over two weeks, primarily due to my dog having a run-in with a skunk and needing to drive down to my aunt and uncle's to pick up power tools. In the two weeks of no sink, I did actually do a bunch of more minor tasks: I painted the entire bathroom, ceiling included, caulked the tub and surround, and put up towel rods, a shower curtain rod, and hooks!

 

I needed to know actual measurements for the plumbing, so I carefully measured all my pipes, and then transferred those measurements to the dresser. I figured out what would need to be reconfigured - three drawers and two braces. Then, having borrowed a jigsaw and hole-saws of varying diameters from my uncle, I moved the vanity into the bathroom. 

I cut the holes needed for the sink drain and faucet. I cut the places where bracing needed to be reconfigured. 

I patched what bracing I could so that it remained sturdy. I cut the drawers (cutting drawers SUCKS). I removed a drawer slide from an upper drawer so that my middle drawer would open and be supported around the drain pipe cutout. The drawer reconfiguring part just generally sucked, at least in part because the drawers all had flimsy bottoms. 

Once I had made all my cuts, I installed the sink and the faucet, which was honestly pretty darn easy. The drain went in smoothly; all the pipes went together nicely.

When I talked about cutting the drawers, I want to be clear that I lived like the above photo for a long while before I actually got the drawers properly figured out! I installed the toilet paper holder on the side (thank you IKEA). 

Below are two photos of the more-or-less finished vanity (and sneak peeks at the rest of the bathroom, too!). I still need to deal with the no-longer-polycrylic top and I also want to paint the knobs and pulls on the vanity as well. The big pulls have a really cool detail that matches the wheat detail in the middle top drawer, so I don't want to just replace them. I might replace the knobs - maybe to match the kitchen knobs?

Basically, though - it's finished. It's just these like tiny details left, and I am SUPER pleased with how it turned out. All the drawers work, even the ones I had to cut space into. It's nice and long; plenty of storage and space. I love love love the sink and faucet. And I really, really love that I did it myself.