Small Bathroom Makeover with Rust-Oleum Cabinet Transformations

I don’t know about you, but my kids are disgusting. After dropping them off at Grandma’s for a week, I finally snapped when walking into their bathroom. Because they share their bathroom with all of the guests that enter our home, I knew I needed to make some changes. Not only was the bathroom looking outdated, but our son had ensured that everything smelled like ammonia as well. That’s just what you want for a guest bathroom, right? No. I knew this small bathroom makeover would be a challenge in trying to make it both guest and child-friendly, but something had to be done!

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The budget

The plan for our small bathroom makeover was to keep all the updates under $300. We knew we would be spending a little more because we had quite a few updates we were wanting to make in the bathroom.

Here was our must-update list:

• Wall paint
• Vanity paint
• Lighting
• Handles on vanity
• New toilet seat and caulk
• Shower curtain
• Wall shelving and other decor

When I look at the length of this list, I have to say, I’m pretty impressed that we were able to stick to our budget and make as amazing of a transformation as we did!

Learn my budget hacking methods that freed up $1,000 liquid cash each month and helped us pay off debt in 18 months!

Before

This before photo I actually snagged from the online listing from when we originally bought the house. However, we hadn’t made many changes beyond switching up the decor a little.

Flooring

The one aspect of this bathroom I’m sad we weren’t able to update is the floor, but we still have plans to tackle that next with peel and stick linoleum tiles. Here are some of our top choices.

Lighting and mirror

Another thing I really wanted to make sure we updated was the outdated lighting fixture. I wanted a more rustic, modern look.

I was also hoping to update the mirror. A great company I found called Mirror Mate allows you to keep your existing mirror and just update the frame around it! Unfortunately, that was an update we weren’t able to make at this time.

What needed fixing

My biggest focus was destroying all signs that I have a little boy using this bathroom daily. 🙈

That’s why we needed a new toilet seat and new sealing for the toilet because we scraped off all of the old caulking around the rim.

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Beyond that, I wanted to really scrub down the walls and vanity because they somehow seem to be covered in toothpaste, dirt and bathroom moisture build-up.

Giving them both a fresh coat of paint would give the entire bathroom a facelift and I was hoping would encourage the kids to start cleaning up after themselves more. Haha. That’s hysterical.

The process

I wanted to go over the process we used with the Rust-Oleum kit in our small bathroom. The Cabinet Transformations kit was always something I was interested in but was certain I would screw up irreversibly. That’s why I decided to start with our small bathroom vanity in our KIDS bathroom!

Instead of buying one of the bigger kits specifically made for cabinets, we purchased Rust-Oleum’s Furniture Transformation kit which is what they recommend for small vanities like ours.

We had it tinted to “midnight.” I honestly don’t know what made me get so bold because this color is definitely not something I would have normally chosen!

Cleaning the cabinet

After getting everything taped off, so I wouldn’t accidentally paint the walls, I made sure to thoroughly wipe down and clean the vanity. Then, I used the Russ-Oleum deglosser that came in the Furniture Transformation kit.

At first I didn’t think the deglosser was doing much, but when I came to places on our vanity that had been stained with hair dye or nail polish, I quickly saw how the deglosser was able to remove all of it.

Painting

When it came to painting, I was surprised at how clean and smooth the paint went on with only a paintbrush. I have done other chalk paint projects before and found they always left hard brush strokes. This kit didn’t do that at all!

Troubleshooting

The biggest trouble I ran into was with the cabinet doors. When I would lay them down and paint them, the paint would always drip onto the newspaper causing it to stick.

I found that propping the cabinet doors against the bathtub worked best to prevent having newspaper stuck to the doors.

My other struggle was remembering the under part of the cabinet right near the floor. I almost forgot to do the final top coat of the cabinet transformation kit. So glad I remembered before finishing up!

Finishing touches

I wanted to make sure to make the full bathroom come together in a cohesive way which is why I tried to find some stylish touches that still kept us on budget.

The shower curtain I got I was able to get for free with my Amazon points, then I bought a shelf and wooden hanging signs for the wall from Joann Fabric’s.

After

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