New House Tour - Master Bath

I promised the master bath makeover was pretty significant. In just one weekend for around $1500 I feel like we really upgraded the space. Like in every room, there is still more I'd love to do (see blue cultured marble bathtub) but, the master bath for now gets bumped somewhere toward the bottom.

Here's what we started with

This is actually a picture from MLS when we bought it. A lot of gold and 10 miles, OK 9ft of cultured blue marble vanity with matching bath tub.

Really, a master bathroom make over wasn't very high on our list. We figured it would cost a ton and nobody sees it except us. But one weekend when Chris was out of town I decided a little update wouldn't
hurt...
I purchased a pair of white IKEA curtains for $4.99 and painted stripes on them with regular latex paint that I found as a mis-tint for $5. I carried the stripe to the very back wall in the actual toilet room. I painted the doors black and spray painted the knobs. Found some $6 rugs for in front of the sinks at home goods and painted all the cabinetry with  my mis-tint. Chris has already replaced the sink faucets. I wasn't sure that the jets could easily be replaced so I taped the bathtub off and made holes around the faucet and jets, then sprayed them black with Rustoleum spray paint (farewell everything gold- except those 2 gold knobs I couldn't get off while Chris was out of town.) So far its held up without issue.

(Extra credit if you noticed the previously mentioned gold knobs)

I figured this would do until further notice. However, I didn't realize until too late, the previous paint on the cabinets was oil base. I used latex, this was not good. It chipped and peeled in tiny spots right away. I told myself we would just live with it until it could be fixed. Then we decided to get granite in the kitchen. I figured why not have them put in the master too.  During some shopping research, I realized for the price of granite would could replace the vanity, mirror, and counter top with something pre-made from Lowes or Home Depot. 

After carefully measuring the bottom of the vanity and comparing for hours online I found that we could actually do two smaller vanities and save a little money.  We had to be really careful the base of the new vanity was a little larger than the current base and not one of the open bottom kind, or we would need to replace the whole floor. Being as I was pretty pregnant and we were trying to remain budget friendly, I felt like flooring was a bit ambitious this go round. 

Finally we settled on this with a plain white top from Home Depot.

Let the demolition begin. As I mentioned before I was pregnant at the time so all the heavy lifting had to be done by Chris. Which meant nearly the whole project. 

He started by taking out the counter top. It was long and heavy and hard work. He had to cut it just so it could fit down the hall. Then he got out the base cabinets which proved much easier. Last, we took down the mirror. We knew it would be too heavy and too dangerous for him to try to get down the hall in one piece so we taped it up and broke it in a couple smaller pieces. 

See why I had to be super careful with my measurements...

Isn't that wallpaper a beauty? I was actually surprised to see it, that means that our bathroom had in fact been "updated" at least once before. 

Next we brought in the new vanities and counter tops. Chris reattached all the plumbing and I did some caulking. We called it a night so that we could let everything dry.

The next morning I started working on texturing the wall. I'd never done this but found a super easy tutorial at The Creativity in the Chaos  it worked great and I highly recommend this method. Tip 1: You should probably take down the wallpaper... I was more like "ain't nobody got time for that" and decided to texture over it.  Tip 2: if you are taking down a builder mirror, you should probably do a really great job sanding along the edges of where the mirror used to be. If not, once you texture and paint, you may be able to see the outline of the old mirror in places...Im just lazy and not that picky so I sorta sanded. Also, after the first coat I let it dry and came back in a few places.

While the texture dried we did some mirror shopping. We found them at home goods for only $30 each. They go perfectly.

Finally I got to paint and accessorize...

And a final recap version before and after (middle too if you want to get technical.) 

I'm really happy with the results. The vanities look great, I love the black. And to be perfectly honest, this project was one of the easiest we've done since we moved in. I mean it was a lot of heavy hard work, but there were not many surprises, extra trips to the hardware store, or "why isn't this working" moments. I'm very proud of husband for doing such a nice job.

Now, anyone know a bathtub re-finisher?