$4 + 4 Hours
This is an older post but everytime I walk past this room I’m amazed at what a transformation it’s been with such a small amount of time/resources.
Well…..we decided to go ahead and stain the vanity cabinet and the mirror frame that I made. I spent $4 to construct the mirror frame and then the rest of the project used leftover materials we had around the garage. I used some dark walnut stain (leftover from our dining room table-found here), I had some gloss poly just lying around, I had some leftover knobs, and to finish it off…some caulk.
I started the project by removing the doors, drawer faces, and the false front. Once I had those removed, I began to sand them down to the bare wood. My new orbital saw broke (don’t worry, I just returned it today and got a new one), so I was forced to use both my palm sander and the belt sander for a little bit. I’ve learned from past mistakes to spend the majority of my time prepping the wood in order to ensure a good finish.
After the doors and drawers were sanded down, I sanded down the base cabinet. I taped off the walls so that I wouldn’t sand down the existing paint and for later use when I applied the stain. The base cabinet was really hard to sand and I was only able to do a mediocre job at best. The side panel of the cabinet was almost disastrous. After sanding it down for just a little bit, I realized it’s just particle board with no actual wood grain. I thought the project was going to be a total fail because of this….but fortunately, I was able to apply the stain in such a way that appeared to have wood grains.
Once sanded down, I applied a nice heavy coat of Dark Walnut stain. I allowed it to dry for an entire day and then applied a gloss polyurethane. It was a fast drying poly but I also allowed that to dry for a full day. After that it was reassembly time with the addition of new cabinet hardware.
[nggallery id=6]
All-in-all, I spent $4 on the project and just about 4 hours total working on it. What do you think? What it worth it?
elliesibiga
elliesibiga
elliesibiga
Syneeb,Thanks for stopping by. I dont think the pictures do it justice. It completely changed the feel/look of the bathroom. I’ve seen an even easier way of adding the mirror frame. Just use an adhesive (liquid nails?) and place overtop of the mirror and then just tape it til it dries. I may be trying this out on our master bath.Glad to help
looks great! And very much like our cabinets…I’ve been trying to figure out what to do or how to do something different. Glad I found your blog! And what a fabulous idea to frame out the mirror! Really “finishes” the look!
Thanks for the comment.I can definitely add some more details and will elaborate more in the future…..I’ve been worried that I’ll bore people.I’d say….we are really new at all of this stuff and I’m doing a lot of learning through mistakes. I’m not sure if I did this correct so I’m a little reserved in giving guidance. I think if I were to do it again, I would attempt to use some sort of paint thinner or lacquer thinner to remove the existing stain.But here’s what i did do; For the sides, I started to aggressively sand it down like I did everything else. I quickly realized that it wasn’t solid wood and started to get real worried that I may have ruined it. I then lightly sanded down the whole side just to rough it up a little bit and dull the finish. I was using a 150 grit sandpaper for everything.Once it was roughed up, I laid the stain on pretty thick and covered every square inch. To finish it off, I made sure to go back and do some final light strokes vertically. It somewhat gave those lines of wood grains. Typically, I would rub the extra stain off but on this project I let the stain sit and dry for a whole day.Because I didn’t wipe off the extra stain, it was still a little sticky the next day and appeared to look a little wet. I’d imagine if I left it for 2 days it would still have a little stickiness to it. I took a chance of putting a coat of polyurethane onto it anyways. I used the same technique to apply the poly and it didn’t seem like very long after that (it was fast drying poly), the stain was sealed in, it was no longer sticky, and the gloss of the consistent coat of poly pulled it all together to even everything out. I just did one coat of poly.I think I got lucky but that’s what worked for us.Thanks again for your comment and let me know if you have other questions/specifics.
You guys are doing great. Could you add more details in your blogs about how you did the staining – especially the sides ?
I think those walls could use some paint.