Flea Market Vanity and the Rest

Now that we’ve shown you the play by play on the important stuff, we can show you the fun (and easy!) details that really bring the room together.

But before I get to that, let’s revisit the original bathroom renovation list and see how much we’ve accomplished/decided against:

• Remove sink cabinet and replace with pretty piece of furniture. (about to tell you about this one)
• Add vessel sink and single-hole faucet. (about to tell you about this one)
• Tile shower/tub area (details here)
• Tile floor (details here)
• Hang beadboard on bottom half of the walls (change of plans, details here)
• Remove wall paper and paint top half of the walls (change of plans, details here)
• Install sconces in vanity area (about to tell you about this one)
• Add floor vent (decided we didn’t really need this right now)
• Replace tub/shower fixtures (details here)
• Hang new mirror for vanity (about to tell you about this one)
• Remove doors on linen closet and paint to look like built-in shelves (in progress)
• Hang curtain(s) in window

Boy am I glad we’re almost done with everything. It’s been a whirlwind of a month, and I’m happy it’s finally time to share the little details with you. First up is our flea market find, the vanity.

Oh, but just to tease you for a second, I’ll tell you the back story. We started here with this monstrous, custom-built sink cabinet that took up a good half of the room (or seemed to) and these hideous lights and medicine cabinet.

And the gas heater on the wall (you can sort of see it to the left of the sink) was just more unused space, especially because we rarely even turned it on.

We weren’t quite sure what we wanted to replace the sink cabinet with, but we knew we wanted it to be more furniture-like and less sink-cabinet-like, and we knew that we wanted it to open up the space and not appear to take up over half the floor.

There’s a pretty good flea market/consignment shop near Meridian, Mississippi, so we headed there with big plans to find some gorgeous antique that just needed a little TLC (without proper measurements, I might add). Well, we found lots of items that fit this bill, but everything was either too big, too expensive, or too in need of TLC (i.e., dilapidated). But then we stumbled upon this little table piled high with glassware and other typical flea market wares. Lacking the aforementioned proper measurements, we weren’t exactly sure how it would fit in the room. For future reference, always measure before you drive several hours to furniture shop, or before you furniture shop at all.

But back to the table. We weren’t quite sure about it, but it was our best option. So we took the plunge and bought it, thinking we could surely find another place for it in the house if it turned out not to work in the bathroom. At only $90, it was certainly a steal.

Once we got it home, we knew it was perfect. Picture me doing a happy dance, and Ed breathing a sigh of relief we didn’t have to go shopping for something else.

Then we started searching for a vessel sink. We wanted something white that wasn’t too contemporary. We couldn’t find anything locally in our budget, so we went to Overstock and snagged this beauty for $102. We also found this faucet for $129 and ordered it as well.

Isn’t it just so pretty? I think so.

For the details: That’s an old cast iron sewing machine bottom and pine planks for the top. All we had to do was dust it off, sand it down, and polyurethane it for waterproofing. Super simple. And it fit both requirements we had for the vanity. The open base and narrower counter keep it from dominating the room. We did lose a lot of storage by ditching the old cabinet, but we’ve got big plans to utilize open shelving on the walls and the old cabinet area to take away the sting.

I may as well tell you we scrapped the sconces idea. After learning that we would have to double our order for beadboard, we decided to save money and not have an electrician run wires for sconces. And one light fixture is cheaper than two, so we saved a few bucks there as well. I won’t lie, I was bummed at the time, but now I couldn’t be happier with the result.

The mirror was another consignment shop deal. When I found it, the frame was gold and looked a little grandmotherly, but at $34, it was too cheap not to consider. After thinking on it for a day or so, I went back and bought the mirror and a can of spray paint and set to work.

I couldn’t remove the frame without doing damage to the mirror, so I opted for this very professional technique.

I covered it in construction paper I found in a drawer, propped it on a trash bag on the back deck, and started spraying.

It was late and freezing outside, so it wasn’t the best spray-painting conditions, but it worked. We used Rust-Oleum’s Hammered Spray in Dark Bronze. It looks a little more gray than bronze to me, but it fits in the room perfectly.

We found the light fixture at Lowe’s for $49. Then we snagged a lamp from the guest room (another consignment find a long time ago) and reused some bath accessories we already had. When we got married (back in 2008), we registered for these bath accessories, and now we finally have the perfect bathroom for them!

We did buy a soap dish at Tuesday Morning for $5, but we had everything else already on hand.

Moving right along to the shower area. We snagged the shower curtain from our second bath. We found it at Lowe’s a few years ago, but I wasn’t able to find it on my last trip there, so it must be discontinued. I did find a snazzy shower caddy to match all our oil-rubbed bronze in there though. We opted for this shower caddy, which cost about $30.

We bought our shower fixtures on Overstock for a pretty serious steal (details here).

For the rest of the room, we added two towel racks, two hooks, and a toilet paper holder, all from Lowe’s and the allen + roth Forsyth collection and a shower rod and hooks and a bath mat found at Tuesday Morning. For these items, we spent about $130.

So that’s where we are folks. Right now, we’re working on converting the old cabinets to open shelving, finishing up the baseboards, and looking for artwork. We’re nearing the end!

If you want to see the bathroom remodel from the beginning, check out demo, cement board installation, hanging and painting beadboard, tiling the shower, and tiling the floor.

If you love any of the elements we used for the vanity or shower, head on over to our Amazon store where we’ve tracked down the fixtures and lookalikes for you.

Post linked up at One Project Closer’s DIY Link It Up #1.