McEntire House Makeover: How to Paint Bathroom Cabinets

Did y'all check out our guest bathroom reveal? It's bomb.com. I didn't really go into much detail as to how we went through each step though, so I thought I'd break it down for you. So far, we removed the wallpaper and the ugly brass sliding shower door. Next on the to-do list was painting the cabinets. Ohhhh how easily we forget the pain and agony of painting cabinets. I swore I'd never put a paint brush to a cabinet ever again, and here I am doing it 5 months later. The ironic thing is we spent all that money, blood, sweat, and probably tears painting the kitchen cabinets white. These cabinets were already white. Surely I would be happy with these cabinets as is, right? WRONG. That would be way too easy. I ~~stole~~ borrowed the charcoal bathroom cabinet idea from some beautiful pictures on Pinterest. Here are a few that inspired me.

I love how they all pop against light colored walls. The marble counter tops would sure be nice too, right? Another day, another dollar (or thousand).

We used almost identical steps as we did with the kitchen cabinets. We first removed the drawers and doors from the cabinets. This time was MUCH easier though. We decided not to paint the inside of the cabinets so we didn't have to completely remove the hardware from the doors....which makes me think: Why did we paint the insides of the kitchen cabinets again? What the heck were we thinking? There must have been a good reason.....

While the cabinet doors were off, we tossed around the idea of keeping the upper cabinets open with some cute baskets. I found some existing baskets (that are obviously too big for the cabinet) to get the idea of what it would look like. While we DO love the look, we DON'T love how all of our business is out for all to see. I could just foresee my OCD husband constantly getting annoyed that the towels weren't completely in line. So that idea was out.

We had to do a little prep work before the sanding and painting party began.When we removed the wallpaper, the caulk in between the wall and cabinets came off and left us with these unfinished, ugly seams.

It's an easy fix though. I just used our DAP Caulk to spread a thin line at the corner and then smooth it out with my finger.

Much better!

Our next step was sanding. We used a 220-grit sandpaper. We didn't necessarily need to completely remove the existing finish. We just wanted to rough them up enough so that the primer would adhere.

The cabinet doors looked like this when we were done.

The sanding exposed a few holes in the cabinets that we needed to fill, like this one.

That was an easy fix too. We just had to throw some wood filler on there, let it dry, and then re-sand it down. We use Elmer's. Why? It did us well in the first grade so why not use it in our adult life? Although this time we avoided eating it.

Once all the sanding was done, we used tack cloth to remove all the dust.

We also taped off the backs of the doors and the insides of the cabinet.

And then we primed. We used Sherwin Williams Multi-purpose Latex primer. This is my attempt to take a picture of the primed cabinets.

Iphone + horrible bathroom lighting + white primer on white cabinets = Terrible pictures.

Picture source: http://www.atlnightspots.com/charles-barkley-daughter-looks-just-like-him/

At least I tried?

We followed the directions on the primer can and waited an hour before painting. The paint color we chose was Valspar Porcelain Shale but we had Sherwin Williams color match it so we could use their brand of cabinet paint.

Bear is never far behind. I pinky swear I don't pose him in these pictures.

It took about 3 coats to get the job done.

That's really all there was to it! I feel much less scarred from cabinet painting this time around than I did with the kitchen. We finished the entire project in one weekend. No lie.