Girl's Bathroom Remodel Part 1

Over a month ago Callie and I started working on her bathroom.  Step 1 - sand the old vanity

Sand monkey sand! It was a messy, pain in the rear, but it went fairly quick (about 6 hours, which is quick compared to doing it by hand) with the new palm sander that I purchased for $14 at Harbor Freight. 

Step 2 - stain the cabinets and trim. I used the General Finishes Stain again but I used a lighter color than I used in the boys bathroom.  What a difference just one coat of stain makes. I ended up doing 2-3 coats of stain to get it even and dark enough. 

We bought and stained baseboards to frame the mirror like we did in the boys bathroom too. 

Step 3 - install the new faucets that I bought from Overstock.com. The beautiful, new faucet cost about half as much as the same type of faucet from Home Depot or Lowes so if you looking at faucets check out Overstock.com before you buy anything. 

 Step 4 - Remove the old, ugly counter top 

Step 5 - Install the new counter top. We went with granite look laminate because our vanity was a non-standard size (of course) so any counter top we wanted would have to be special order. I didn't want to spend our entire budget on a stupid special order real granite counter top. 

I was worried the faux granite would look cheap but I actually really like it.  It looks even better in person than it does in the pictures.   

We had to special order the laminate counter top too (and wait 3 freakin weeks) but it was still much more affordable than real granite.  

This project, as most projects we start, seems to be taking forever. Most of the bathroom fixtures I purchased are still sitting in the formal dining room.  

I bought these adorable handles at Lowes. We put them on the wall cabinet that I bought on Target.com (as seen above) so it would match too. I love them and I can't wait until Tony actually has a day off and he can put them on the cabinet. That will be Step 6 (or 16, I've lost track)

It was $140 for the counter top, the stain cost $13 and the handles were around $3 a piece. It has been a lot of work but the remodel is much cheap than buying a new vanity/counter top would have been. The inside of the cabinets were worn and damaged 

 So I bought a few rolls of contact paper from the Dollar store and updated the inside of the cabinets too. We still have a ton to do in the bathroom. We are going to tile the shower and floor, repaint, install new light fixtures etc etc but it's looking pretty good so far isn't it? 

In our spare time (ha!) I decided to remove all of Callie's stuffed animals from the area above her closet and replace it with a more "age appropriate" display.

We added lights, a feather boa, an Eifel Tower (since Callie is obsessed with all things Parisian) and a big wooden "Bonjour" that we found at Savers and sprayed pink to match the rest of her room.  It's hard to tell from the pictures but I think it turned out really cute. 

As long as I was updating things (I was on a roll) I decided to spray paint an ugly clock that was hanging in the girls bathroom to match the updated bronze fixtures I had bought. Below is the "after" picture 

We also spray painted a hand me down gold framed mirror we had hanging in our formal dining room with "Old Rubbed Bronze" spray to update it.

I was very happy with the way both projects turned out and I now want to spray paint a bunch of other things with the "Oil Rubbed Bronze" aka ORB spray paint.  I may be addicted.