Gray bathroom cabinets

For some reason, oh wait, I know the reason, we have a ton of gray paint samples lying around from various projects, so guess what? You probably can guess that I like to paint stuff.  These bathroom cabinets in our master bathroom were the perfect thing to update. For one, there are only two cabinets and two small drawers so we're talking about a project that would take a day to complete and I could have some immediate results.   

Look at the mess underneath. The whole place needed a redo pronto.  I think my other middle name is organization because I love it when I can find things and I hate it when I can't.  I guess I'm just a little bit of type A.   So off came the doors. And out came the drawers.  I used my little all purpose screw driver to undo the hinges. I removed the hinges from the doors as well so that I could paint both sides and paint the hinges themselves. The hinges looked like they had been previously painted by someone who thought silver would look nice. Well yeah it looks nice if you remember to prime first.  The silver paint had scratched off in many places and there was paint on top of that where someone tried to paint around them and spilled a little.

I gave the cabinets a good scrubbing to to get off any hairspray or other particles that seem to stick to wood. Yes we both wear hair spray. We're OG like that. Next I used a 2" nylon brush to paint them with Olympic's NO VOC Semi-Gloss in Night's Armor.  I did two coats to give it a nice finish. And look at those shelves. Water spots galore. They are simply stains, so it was best to just hide them (in my opinion.)

I covered the shelves with drawer liner I picked up from Home Goods for $7.99 for 7 sheets. Plus it's scented. Ooh la la. All that stuff in there is just to hold it down while the tape adhered. I used double sided tape.

I took the cabinet doors outside and sanded them down with 220 grit sand paper and used primer on the inside of the doors because they had never been painted.  Then I used my brush again to give each side two coats of paint. I let them dry outside for 2 days.

While those were drying I sanded off my hardware with 220 grit sand paper as well and then sprayed them Valspar's primer so that my spray paint would stick nicely.

Next I gave them 3 light coats of Rust-Oleum's Metallic Spray paint in Oil Rubbed Bronze.  I also sprayed the screws which worked well. I let them be outside for 3 days to really cure.

While I waited for my hardware and doors to dry, I decided to do a little organizing under there. I found the three black baskets with chevron striped liners from Home Goods as well.  These gave me so much storage for all that little stuff that floats around.  And I think the gray suits the color of the cabinets as well.

For now the drawers are less cluttered, but could use some kind of organizers in them.

When my hardware was done curing, I hung my doors back up with my screwdriver.

Here is the pretty finish. I love the dark color against the gray.

And no matter how hard I tried to get my doors evenly hung, this is what happened. Just a hair off. Argh.

I found these little art deco white marble knobs at Anthropologie in the clearance bin for $3 each.  So I got a total of 4 for $12.  They were originally $10 a piece so a pretty sweet deal.

And once again a BEFORE picture of the cabinets.

And the AFTER.  I'm loving the color in the bathroom, instead of just white.  Gives a nice contrast I think to all the white tile.

Have you painted some cabinets gray? Did you love them?  I think these are going to hold up great over time.

xo
Cathleen