Turning a dresser into a Vanity for the bathroom

I made over both vanities in the girls bathroom and our bathroom from dressers.  I will use the girls vanity as an example. I purchased the girls vanity as a dresser from Habitat from Humanity Restore for $45.  

The girls bathroom vanity -

It started out as an over painted white dresser.  It had great bones but it had lots of layers of paint.  I can't remember but there were so many different colors as I started to sand down.  

I even had to end up using a stripping agent which if I can avoid I do.  I also had to take the back piece off you see in the picture below. It wouldn't work with the sink we had picked out.

I knew I wanted to have a design on on the front.  I had decided on doing a reverse stencil.  How I did this was using my Silhouette stencil cutter.  I cut out my design on vinyl sticky and was set to go.

Next I added the little floral corner design pieces (accent angles) that I picked up from Home Depot.  I just used wood glue to adhere them.

I started the painting process. I started with the drawers first.  I used a color called Saddle Tan from Benjamin Moore to paint the area where the wording would be going.  

I painted a small area on the drawers where I wanted the wording to be.  

I then painted the rest of the dresser using an antique white color all over the dresser itself, and also on the remaining area of the drawers.

Once the saddle tan was completely dry I placed my letters on the area and painted over the letters and the remaining part of the saddle tan with the antique white.  

I let everything dry completely.  Using my little tool that looks like a scalpel knife I peeled off the vinyl letters...

Prior to completely finishing the work on the vanity our carpenter did the cut out work for the plumbing and the sink.  By the way, we used a carpenter because we were in the middle of building our home.  Wayne Cooper is an amazing carpenter that did all of our trim work.  He also was doing work during our home renovations prior to the fire.

Let me say that his carpenter skills are by far some of the best I've ever seen!  We had some challenging corners with the crown molding and he blew me away with how precise he is!!  

This is how he achieved cutting out the sink. They came with a template that he taped down and cut accordingly. He used a jig saw with a reverse tooth blade. It is a blade that cuts on the down stroke instead of the up. This helps to keep the top from chipping. If you get one of these just make sure when you are cutting that you keep a decent down pressure on the saw because it tends to want to jump up. A jig saw with a roller guide also helps to keep the blade straight.

He also cut out the back for the plumbing using the jig saw.  

Lucky for me... I had the opportunity (and still do) to be taught to use power tools and such by some pretty amazing professionals that have been in the business for many years.  I feel blessed that they don't mind taking the time to teach me.

Now I was able to go on and finish the vanity.  

**We only did the above step because we were ready to make the cuts and set the vanities for trim cuts.  You can finish the vanities prior to doing the cuts.  I will say from doing both bathrooms, I'd make the cuts prior to completely finishing the painting process, especially the sink cut.  This helps so if there are any chips or if something happens to your finish you don't have to go back and do touch-ups.  

After the cuts were made, I lightly sanded the vanity down to achieve a smooth surface.  

I then used a metallic glaze from Home Depot by Martha Stewart called Muscavado more of it all over the dresser itself and less on the drawers.  I used a little dark brown stain on any spots I wanted to add a little depth to (i.e. corners, inside and around the accent angles).  I used a clear wax and buffed.  Once it was all done and ready to go, I used lacquer to seal the top and to ensure that water would just wipe off without creating any damage. 

I let the vanity cure for a couple of days before we put it into the bathroom and set the sink.  I added some brown colored glass antique look knobs that I found at Hobby Lobby.

Once we had the vanity in place, we set the sink and called in the plumber.  

The colors look a little different due to the lighting in their bathroom.  But I will say it looks HOT!!  

Total cost for me to do this was - Benjamin Moore Saddle Tan...already had since it was a sample from picking wall colors (I didn't even use 1/4 of the jar).
Antique white paint already had
Glaze - Already had but the cost was $5.48 used less than half a jar so say $2.75
Brown Stain already had
Clear Wax already had - used very little
Lacquer already had - used very little
Vinyl letters - I already had the vinyl
Angle accents - on clearance at Home Depot and I believe they were $2.00 for a set of 2 = $4.00
Glass knobs - 6 * $1.50 = $9.00
Sink (purchased from build.com) had a discount - $95.00


From a $45 dollar dresser with about $110.75 of products = $155.75 and a little time to a beautiful vanity.  

~ Lynn

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