When considering a DIY bathroom remodel, I like to first employ what I call the keep vs. go audit: a crucial part of the home renovation process where you analyze the value of your home’s existing inventory, adjusting for perceived budget, time, and level of effort. This could look something like this: bucket A is everything that’s considered non-salvageable and must be 100% replaced, and bucket B is everything that’s either already ok or deemed redeemable with a bit of elbow grease.
After assessing the master bathroom vanities, I felt I had a bucket B situation on my hands. My original 1970s cabinets weren’t especially exciting to look at (shocker), but that white-bread-with-a-side-of-mayo plainness meant they’d be relatively easy to dress up without pouring a bunch of money into the project (read: more money for other things). With just a bit of trim detailing and new hardware, voila! Shaker cabinets.
Shake things up with DIY shaker cabinets
The totally clean slate surface presented the perfect candidate for a shaker cabinet: a minimalistic cabinet design characterized by four symmetrical edges and a recessed center part of the door. This would allow me to add a little more dimension without venturing into the terrifying land of the overly ornate, fraught with scrolls, corbels, and swirls. Oh my! (I’m all about clean and simple lines; what can I say?) Updating the hardware was undoubtedly on the menu. Still, additionally, I thought a cool decorative insert could bring a little more visual interest, and thus, I added decorative metal sheets to the center of each vanity.
Step one: Prep the surface of the vanities
- This meant stripping away all the things I didn’t need, namely the paint-blasted 12 ft long (!) concrete countertop complete with seashell sinks. This only took five very gracious people to lift, maneuver, and exit the premises. No big deal.
- Remove the existing hardware and trim.
- Strip the existing paint and/or primer the heck out of it. This may seem like a bummer, but it saves time and frustration in the long run. There’s nothing worse than slathering on several coats of paint just to have it peel right off because it didn’t properly adhere to the surface. (Additional tip: if it’s an older home, be sure to test for lead-based paint before making any changes. These kits can be ordered online or found at most hardware stores for pretty cheap.)
Step 2: Go a little off the books
NOTE: Here’s the part where I disclose that, in retrospect, I probably should have done this differently. (Remember, I promised to always keep it real with you?) What I SHOULD have done was recreate the doors from scratch and replace them using the existing cabinet base. Training Hands Academy does a great job of demonstrating this technique in an easy-to-digest way.
Step 3: Put together your new doors (your own way)
However, I did not take this route. Instead, I cut my styles (side pieces that run vertically) to the length of the door and my rails (the middle pieces that run horizontally and are placed on the inside of either style). I then glued the pieces onto the face of the existing door and waited for them to dry using painter’s tape to maintain the bond. Simple enough, right? Well, kind of.
- Rail dimensions: 2.5 inches all around
- Style dimensions: 2.5 inches for cabinets, 1.5 inches for drawers
As you may have already surmised, the problem is this approach leaves a gap around your edges where the original door and the new frame we’ve built meet up. My solution for this was to use a ton of spackle and slather it into the groove like the fattest PB&J you’ve ever seen, smoothing it out at the top to create as flush an edge as possible. This certainly improved things, but it still wasn’t a magic fix. (I’m sure you’re as shocked as I was to learn PB&J spackling isn’t an official carpentry form.) Even after all my cabinet smearing, there’s still a shallow gap between the pieces if you look closely. All in all, I deemed it was something I could live with.
Step 4: Adding the final touches to your shaker cabinets
Then, it was time for the final touches — paint and hardware! I could’ve chosen one solid color, often the case for shaker cabinets. That’s the route I initially took, and it would’ve made my life much easier, but something seemed to be lacking. So, time for another learning experience! I decided to go back and change the trim color after the fact, a painstakingly manual painting process, as it was already attached to the door. Had I realized this ahead of time, I could have painted first, then applied. But, hey, sometimes that’s just part of the creative process. You gotta roll with the pictorial punches.
Tools & Supplies
- Paint: Mercer Charcoal by Kelly Moore for the base, Urbane Bronze by Sherwin Williams for the trim
- Hardware: Sadly, the knobs I used are no longer available at Target, but I did hunt down some cool alternatives:
- Origins 3/4 Round Knob
- Gliderite Hardware 2 1/4 length Bar Knob
- 1.5″ Diameter Round Knob Multipack Set of 10 (Set of 25 also available)
- Monaco 3/4″ Diameter Cylindrical Knob
- Diamond Knurling 1 3/8″ Diameter Round Knob
- Texture 2″ Length Bar Knob
- Sinclaire 2 3/8″ Length Bar Knob
- Oversized 3 1/8″ Novelty Knob by Richelieu
- Nouveau II 5/8″ Diameter Cylindrical Knob
- Lisbon 1 1/4″ Diameter Round Knob
Last but not least, I attached the new hardware and the newly painted trim around the base of the cabinet and called my part done! Later, my new counters, vessel sinks, and faucets were installed, but all of that fell outside my DIY purview. I already knew I’d be replacing countertops elsewhere (see kitchen and fireplace rehabs), so I thought I could split up a slab between the two vanities and the bench I created for my fireplace. The dimensions worked out perfectly, and I could group all counter installations (kitchen, master bath, and fireplace) in one pass. (Another hack for getting the most for your money.)
Overall, upgrading my vanities to shaker cabinets was a relatively simple and budget-friendly way to spruce up the bones of the bathroom. My unconventional approach may have simplified things in terms of using power tools, but it presented some additional challenges (see spackle and paint woes above) elsewhere.
One response to “How to do a DIY Bathroom Remodel on a Budget”
[…] most straightforward option would be to add raised panel molding to my flat doors. Creating a 3D shaker door would have been another option but would require more overall work and a lot of precision with […]