Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the sweet comments you left on my post yesterday of my bathroom reveal.

When I hit “publish” on that post, I got kind of nervous that no one would like it.  I felt like an awkward junior high school girl hoping her friends would like her new outfit.

When the comments started rolling in, you just made my day!  It felt like I was getting a ton of “high fives,” and I was lovin’ it!

A lot of you asked me questions about the makeover in the comment section, and I will be answering them in some upcoming posts.

I had a lot of questions about how Cy made the vanity, so I am going to do my best to share it today.

We had two things in mind when building this vanity…to save space and to save money.

To save some space in the bathroom, I wanted a smaller vanity that was open underneath.  I knew it would make the bathroom feel so much bigger not to have a bulky, large vanity cabinet.

To save some money, we decided to use a leftover piece of butcher block from our kitchen renovation for the vanity top and have Cy build the whole thing.

However, why Cy chose to build this vanity at about 10:30 at night, upstairs in the addition, by the light of a single lamp, I cannot recall.

It was late.  He was tired.

Let’s just say this was not one of our best moments as a DIY couple.

I think Cy may have been a little bit annoyed by me and my camera. 

So I apologize for the lighting in these pictures.  I had to use my flash because it was late and dark.

Cy started with four newel posts from Lowe’s.

This may be confusing, but he cut off the bottom of the newel posts to be the top of our vanity legs.

Then he cut off the top of the newel posts to be the bottom of our vanity legs. 

Next, he attached small pieces of wood with glue {PL Adhesive} and screws to be the “anchor pieces” for the wood sides of our vanity.

Once the anchors were attached, he could then nail the vanity sides into them.

Cy ALWAYS adds PL Adhesive to each wood piece before he screws or nails it to the wood.

Cy followed this same process for all four corners of the vanity legs on the top and bottom.

Here is Cy checking to make sure the sides are level.

{INSERT DRAMA}

Remember it’s late?  Remember Cy’s tired?

Well, when he was about to add the butcher block top, I told him I thought the vanity may be a little too tall looking.  That did not go over very well at that very moment. 

Cy grabbed his hand saw and went to town at sawing off some of the top of the vanity.  I was afraid he was going to ruin it or that it wouldn’t look right.  We may or may not have been arguing at this point.  {wink}

Not a great DIY moment, but hey, it happens!

Fortunately, he was able to make the vanity shorter without shortening my life span.

Cy added some PL Adhesive to the top of the vanity before he attached the butcher block.

He measured to make sure the butcher block was centered on the vanity.

He put a few 2 inch finish nails in the butcher block to secure it to the vanity. We let that sit overnight.

Later, Cy took a piece of 1/2 inch birch plywood and cut out the corners so it would fit on the lower shelf.

We added a piece of trim around the bottom shelf of the vanity.

We also thought the sides of the top of the vanity looked a little plain, so to make it look more custom, Cy added another small piece of trim around the sides.

Trim pieces are small but can make a BIG difference on a piece of furniture!

{MISSING SOME PICTURES}

One day while I was out of the house, Cy cut a sink bowl hole in the butcher block and installed the sink.  So I was not able to get any pictures of this step.

However, most sinks come with a template for the hole that you need to cut out of your vanity top.  Cy just centered the sink template on the butcher block and traced around it.  Then he drilled a pilot hole on the traced line with a wood bit.  He put his jigsaw blade inside the pilot hole and cut out the sink hole.

If you want to see how to do this, you can check out THIS POST when Cy installed a sink in the dresser/vanity for our master bathroom.

Back to the guest bathroom…

We stained the butcher block a Dark Walnut from Minwax and sealed it with 5 coats of polyurethane in Semi Gloss.  He lightly sanded in between each coat of poly.

By the way, did you notice my gorgeous Moen faucet?!  It is called “Waterhill.”

Moen provided this faucet for my bathroom makeover!  I am in love with it!  I think the look of this faucet fits perfectly with my cottage bathroom.

I absolutely love the contrast of the shiny chrome against the butcher block and wood walls.

It’s amazing how you can tell that this is a well made product.  It’s the nicest faucet we have ever had in any of our homes.  You can tell the quality just by touching the handle.  Seriously!

Thank you, Moen!

Today, I added a chrome towel bar to the side of the vanity.

The towel bar is practical because it gives me a place to hang my hand towels, but it also provides a way for me to hide the ugly plumbing beneath my vanity.  Love that!

I am thrilled with how the vanity turned out!

Since we had the butcher block left over from our kitchen renovation, it helped to save us some money in this project.

The newel posts we used for the legs cost us about $120.

IF we had had more time to build this vanity, I would have probably frequented the Habitat Store to try and find 4 matching newel posts I could have used for this project.  If you don’t want to use newel posts for this project, you could just use four plain, straight wood posts.

So, we could have definitely saved some more money on this project if we had had the luxury of more time to complete it.

But we only had about $150 total in this vanity {not including the sink, faucet, and towel bar.}

I still think that is a great price for a custom built vanity.  I love it!

To answer more of your questions about our renovation, I will be sharing a post about our wood planked walls..

I will also be sharing more about our split bathroom shower curtain, AND we will be giving you a complete cost breakdown of our bathroom makeover.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you have a blessed day!

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