Hey guys. Yes, you read that right. I’m here to admit another failure in my decorating adventures. Well, not a total failure but it didn’t turn out the way I’d imagined when I started painting my bathroom vanity. Painting furniture is not the easy task that the internet can sometimes make it seem. There’s a lot of patience and elbow grease that goes into painting a bathroom vanity just like any other piece. Even after reading several how to paint furniture tutorials, I still made errors and I hope they’ll help you if you try to do this yourself.
When shopping last fall for a bathroom vanity, the color didn’t matter because I knew from the beginning that I wanted it a color I couldn’t buy outright. The folks over at HOMERIGHT provided me with their paint sprayer after meeting them at Haven Conference last year. And I just knew I was going to use it to paint whichever vanity I found for cheap.
I ended finding a vanity, it wasn’t cheap and it wasn’t solid wood. *smacks forehead* But it seemed perfect for me at the time. The weather was starting to cool and all I wanted was to get the thing painted fast so we could get it in.
Mistake #1
Don’t rush to paint anything. Seriously. Just don’t do it. I now have a ton of clean up on the inside of the cabinet because I didn’t take the preliminary steps to protect surfaces and remove doors, etc.
Mistake #2
I wasn’t 100% confident in my pre sanding abilities so I wanted to give it the best possible chance against chipping. On top of using Kilz primer, I also thought it’d be a good idea to seal with polycrylic. I used it in the paint sprayer and because of my impatience, I hadn’t been cleaning the nozzle very well so it was clogged and I wanted it sealed in 1 coat. The next day the entire piece was coated with drips.
So I had to go back in and sand back breakingly hard anyways.
Mistake #3
This was not a good time to go form over function. I should have bought a wood piece point blank. I’m now having to play surgery on the bottoms of the side panels where the cheap particleboard started to break up.
You can warn others of the mistakes I made by sharing this post. Here’s an image you could share to Pinterest/Facebook/Twitter:
At the end of the day, I’m still really excited with the piece that I have in my bathroom. I wouldn’t go back to a plain colored vanity any time soon. I just love the substance it gives the space. I would absolutely do everything to get the end product differently if I ever undertake this kind of thing again.
I have used my brand provided HOMERIGHT products for lots of projects at this point and I’ve loved them. I do think it pays to learn a hard lesson of impatience with practice pieces. I do have a good success story coming soon with these pieces so stay tuned for that.
Looking to paint a piece? Try these products:
Spray Shield
Paint Sprayer
KILZ Original Spray Paint
Latex Paint
Sand Paper
