Modern on Monticello

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Repurposed Bath Vanity To Custom Furniture Cabinet

DIY· Our Home

August 28th, 2015 is a day our family will remember for a long long time.  Our beloved dog Hercules passed away, my daughter damaged the body panels on her low riding sports car, and we had a old rotten 100 foot oak tree fall on our house.  We had over $40,000 worth of damage to our home.    All this happened within two hours of each other and my husband was on call at the hospital.  Some things we were able to salvage from the damage like my custom built 10 foot bath vanity.  This post is about how we took our damaged bath vanity and repurposed it to create a beautiful custom furniture cabinet for our front family room.

This post contains affiliate links which means I earn a small commission if you purchase anything through these links.  Thank you for supporting this blog.

 

 

 

Overall, It was NOT a good night for us on the Friday night when the tree fell hitting the master bedroom and bathroom and damaging the plumbing to the basement bath at the same time.  You can see more of the photos of the damage in this post.   



Looking back though we did gain many blessings that night as well.  No one was hurt when the tree fell on the house, we got a new roof, two bathrooms were partially remodeled, our master bedroom was remodeled, and we learned just how well built our house is overall. It is all in how you look at things.

Bath vanity repurposed to a custom credenza.

I never like to discard or throw anything away that can be reused, recycled, and upcycled into something new. One of the items we were able to salvage from the damage in our master bathroom was the custom built bath vanity cabinet original to the house since 1979.

The back of it had water damage and they broke the top when they had to remove it from the wall.  Overall though the base of the cabinet was still intact. In fact, the builder and the cabinet maker both made comments about the superior construction of the vanity and offered to get rid of it for me several times (meaning reuse it themselves elsewhere).  That wasn’t happening.  The style of the cabinet matched all of the other cabinets in my house and I knew I could remake it in to something useful, even if it just became a storage cabinet in the garage.

 

 

So for nearly two years we moved this vanity either out of the way of the construction, and then to different rooms in the house until we decided what to do with it.  I have had this vanity sitting in the breakfast nook – in the way- or in the front room  – very much in the way of the renovation in that room – until we got to a point of refinishing it and installing it as a custom furniture cabinet for a TV.  It was a much longer process than originally planned like a lot of projects are.  And I couldn’t put it in the garage – where it would never get touched again – because the hot rod is in the garage.  

I probably got this project done because it had been sitting in the way for so long anyway and I was tired of moving it around.

 

 

This picture shows what the vanity looked like when it was actually installed in the master bath.    The original size of the bath vanity was 10 feet long. Without the top and only with the base cabinet it is 7 feet long.  Actually this picture also shows the new floors in the master bathroom but the old cabinet was not reinstalled.  We just had to keep moving it around during the construction and it’s original spot was a good holding area until the new cabinets arrived.

 

 

 

 

Two years later we have finally repurposed the bath vanity into a custom furniture Credenza.

With our front living room renovation (also started because of the tree damage and new windows for the room), you can read more about that here, we knew the walls were going to be white and I wanted this custom cabinet to really be a prominent furniture piece in the room.  I decided to paint it with chalk paint in Relic by DecoArt followed by a layer of Dark Creme Wax from DecoArt.

 

 

My husband basically rebuilt what was needed for this cabinet by making new back and side panels and building a custom wood top.  I then stained the top of the cabinet in MinWax PolyShades stain in Espresso.

 

 

Even after the several coats of chalk paint, and a new custom made wood top, the credenza still looked like a painted bath vanity.  I hate to admit it but it did. 

Since I didn’t want this to look like a bath vanity, my husband also cut out 4″ x 4″ block feet for the cabinet to fit inside of the toe kick area of the cabinet.   The larger blocks helped to draw attention away from the toe kick a bit.  I painted both the feet and the original toe kick in the Relic chalk paint.

 

 

We purchased new silver hardware at Home Depot and finally put this custom furniture cabinet in it’s permanent home in the front family room.

 

 

 

 

 

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!”  2 Corinthians 5:17


 

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Nellie says

    Hi Donna,

    Thank you for stopping by and for your kind comments…they were appreciated.
    Also Thanks for hosting at Home Matters.

    Love how your vanity turned out…..really beautiful and what a great idea.

    Hope you have a lovely Fall Season.
    Blessings,
    Nellie

    Reply

    • Donna says

      Thanks for visiting Kathryn and I’m glad you liked the project. Thanks for the feature too. I’ll go check it out.

      Reply

  5. Keri says

    Oh my gosh I am so inspired! We have outgrown the vanity that I have in our entryway to wrangle all of the shoes, and something like this would be perfect! It never crossed my mind to repurpose a cabinet like this, but you did a gorgeous job on yours. I love it. I might be visiting the Restore tomorrow…

    Reply

  8. Teresa says

    It looks so pretty, no one would say that was an old bathroom vanity! Thank you for sharing the transformation and the inspiration at The Really Crafty Link Party this week. Pinned!

    Reply

  9. Lorelai @ Life With Lorelai says

    Your custom furniture cabinet is gorgeous! You would never guess it was a bathroom vanity in its former life. So pretty, so functional, and I am totally jealous of that extra storage space! Awesome job, well done! Thanks for sharing at the #HomeMattersParty 🙂

    ~Lorelai
    Life With Lorelai

    Reply

  10. Leanna says

    What a horrible day. It would be so compounding distressful to deal with in such quick succession.

    The cabinet turned out really nice, adding the feet made all the difference. Its beautiful and I oh all that wonderful door fronted storage.

    Reply

    • Donna says

      Thanks for visiting Leanna. It was a bad day. But we got so many other blessings from the whole ordeal, including saving a piece of furniture from the trash pile.

      Reply

    • Donna says

      Thanks Michelle. I do too. It looked much differently before I added the dark wax though so the dark wax was key this time around.

      Reply

  14. Nicole says

    That August 2015 day sounds like a disaster! I’m glad no one was hurt by the tree. The repurposed bath vanity looks great, I love that dark stain. Stopping by from this week’s #HomeMattersParty

    Reply

  15. Jamie says

    That turned out beautifully! I would so love to do this when we have the budget to redecorate our master bath! 🙂

    Reply

  17. Lauren says

    Wow! That’s a switch — usually you see furniture repurposed into a bath vanity, not the other way around! I can see why you kept it. It’s a beautiful piece.

    Reply

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