When we lived in Savannah I started on a bathroom re-do project but never got completely done. I was so terrified to paint the bathroom cabinets that I left them be the light wood color I hated and resented overtime I looked at them.

Our home now has those same cabinets and I’ve stared at them with disdain since we moved in May. After redoing the china cabinet last week, I decided WHAT THE HECK, LETS DO THIS THANG.

So, quite literally, I woke up and decided to do it on Tuesday.

My first step was to go on Pinterest and look at some bathrooms that were the size of mine and that I thought, you know, I wouldn’t mind looking at that every day. After seeing MANY white cabinets or black or dark stains, I typed in “blue bathroom cabinets” in the search bar. That is when I saw this picture and immediately knew I needed to do a blueish greenish color on my bathroom cabinets.

After I made that decision I went into the bathroom to look at the tile to make sure it would match and low and behold- IT WAS MEANT TO BE. Not too matchy but in the same family of color. Yes.

I got my trusty sander and went to town on the cabinets. They had a protective coat so I made sure to knock all that off. Then I took the drawers out and the doors off. All the hardware was placed in a baggy PER DOOR. I only had two doors so it wasn’t a big deal, but I can see how confusing and jumbled things could be if you took them off and put them in a pile. You want to be sure you separate them out per door.

I headed to Lowe’s to grab some paint. It took me a while to find the color I wanted. Everything seemed a little too blue or a little too green. Finally I settled on Valspar 5002-4B La Fonda Villa Fountain in a Satin finish. One reason I chose this color was because it is a National Trust for Historic Preservation color and in my experience they have always turned out great. I feel if it has that title you really can’t go wrong. Here is an online swatch of it but it clearly isn’t the same as in person or on a surface.

I went and grabbed Ryder from school and headed home to paint!

Here are the cabinets before I started:

After sanding:

The first coat when on pretty patchy and thin so I was very nervous thinking, “WHAT HAVE I DONE?!” (I have tried rotating this picture a million times but IT IS NOT ROTATING. Sigh.)Luckily, it didn’t stay that way! I painted three solid coats on every surface of the cabinets and that seemed like the perfect amount for them. I painted the doors on the ground and then carefully inserted the drawers and painted the fronts of them. (AGAIN, WON’T ROTATE, KILL ME NOW.)

Right at the end of this project I may or may not have had a moment of clumsiness and well…. this is what happens.

Because it is a bathroom and the surfaces will get wet, I HAD to put on a couple of coats of polyurethane. I did two coats on the sink cabinets and three on the tub cabinets. *I first let the cabinets dry for 24 hours before applying polyurethane.

I truly cannot believe what a difference just the cabinets make. I plan to paint the walls a light grey and have some storage solutions and pretty things to go up on the wall. Hopefully I will get that done this weekend and be able to show you the finished master next week!

This project cost me $35 dollars: I bought the paint ($18-20), a brush and tarp to lay down because I was out. I should have skipped buying the brush because I bought a “cabinet roller” from Lowe’s thinking that would save time. Turns out, in my opinion, paint does not go on well with those. So I scrapped that idea quickly and got my trusty ol’ brush out. So the project could have cost me only $25.

As far as time frame goes…. y’all, I decided to do this at 8:00am, researched on pinterest until probably 1o:00am, sanded and cleaned every surface and taped off edges, went to lowe’s, picked Ryder up at 12:30, came home and painted the first coat (always takes the longest), picked Rory up from school at 2:30, finished and had the cabinets back together by the time Andy got home from work at 5:30. So half a day for a major bathroom change! Side note: I didn’t inform Andy I was doing this project so he came home to a surprise! ha!

I mean…. TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS AND HALF A DAY FOR NEW CABINETS. You cannot beat that! I am so glad I stepped out of that fear/comfort zone and went for it. I think it makes the bathroom a million times better already! Can’t wait to show you the finished room!

I hope you enjoyed this Fixer Friday! I would love to see your fixer so use the #fixerfriday hashtag and I will be searching for yours!

Selfishly I am loving this new series on the blog because it has gotten me so inspired to go ahead with the projects I’ve had in my mind for the house. It is amazing what a can of paint and branching out of the box can do!

(I also linked this post up with The Shabby Nest: Frugal Friday – I LOVE reading this blog and especially browsing the links on Friday!)

I’m excited to start a new series on the blog today called “Fixer Fridays”.

Here’s the deal. I love to fix things up. Give me the nastiest piece of furniture and I will find a way for it to be revived. Show me a house that looks like a dump and I don’t see the bad, I see the good.

When Andy and I were looking for houses I really, REALLY, really wanted a fixer upper. We looked at a couple of “fixers” and I loved all of them. Unfortunately, I am also very practical and knew that with Andy’s work schedule and our budget currently it just wasn’t in the cards for me to get that fixer. So now my plan is to keep at it and eventually buy a cute little fixer that I can transform and then rent out. Compromise.

There are so many reasons why I love our new house, one of them being that there are some definite fixer things in the house. Our kitchen isn’t my favorite. Definitely functional and great bones, but the aesthetics and layout aren’t my favorite. There are a few other things with cosmetic changes coming their way.

Today I am going to show you the first furniture fixer I have done since moving to Cleveland. One issue with the kitchen is the lack of storage. I needed a place to hide small appliances and also something pretty in the room. When I lived in Savannah a precious lady sold me this china cabinet for $35. And it is the best $35 I’ve ever spent probably.

The first step in redoing furniture is cleaning it. I always get a swiffer duster and dust the piece of furniture. Then I go in with a broom and clean the bottom of it to be sure there are no bugs. (I once bought a piece infested with spiders and I can’t even tell you what kind of nightmare that was.)

The next step is sanding. I hate to sand, but you just gotta do it. I get my electric sander and buff all the “shine” off the piece of furniture. 99% of the time I don’t need to do more than a very light sanding to rough up the piece so the paint with grab onto it better. Once you are done sanding, take that duster you used earlier and get all the extra dirt the sander kicks up off of the furniture.

Now it is time to paint! Tape off anything you don’t want paint on and get to it! I personally always use a brush to paint, but some use small rollers. The style I usually paint my pieces is an antique look where it isn’t perfect and looks aged so the brush works better with this technique. On this piece I did three coats, but most of the time two is enough. The paint I used was paint and primer together – Behr from Home Depot. I don’t know the color, but it is just white. I’ve used this quart of paint on 5 projects now. FIVE! 

After the paint dries it is time to rough that bad boy up! My favorite part of the process is this part. Sometimes I will look at a piece of furniture freshly painted and think, “oh man…. is this gonna work?!” because I HATE the way it looks sometimes before I rough it up.

To rough up the edges and give it the antique look I take a piece of sand paper and rub it on all the edges that would naturally wear down- like the corners and edges of the furniture. Some furniture and looks you want to achieve require the use of stain. I just rub the stain onto the furniture along the edges and then rub off with a clean rag until the desired amount is on the piece. The piece I’m showing you today I didn’t feel the need to use stain. Next time I do I will document that part and show you!

Once you’ve sanded it the edges and make it your desired amount of “dirty”, you are done! Again, some pieces you may want to put some stain on the edges. If it is a piece of furniture you will be eating on you’ll need to polyurethane. I did my dining room table and added stain and polyurethane and that post can be found here.

So here is the piece before:

And after:

It took me about 3 days from start to finish but I didn’t work in long time frames. If I would have had 4 hours without interruption I could have done it all in that time.

I hope you enjoyed this Fixer Friday and that you are inspired to buy something ugly and make it beautiful!

I’m so glad to be able to have something to hide ugly small appliances and also display my beautiful china that Andy’s mom gave to me!

I made a tiny video of the living, dining, and kitchen today. It was pouring down rain so sorry about the lighting!

Happy Fixer Friday!