DIY - Repurposing a Buffet or Dresser as a Bathroom Vanity: Part 2

At long last I've finally finished 
the buffet to bathroom vanity conversion!  

Well, the painting part at least... I actually finished several weeks ago,  but I've been tired and lazy and am just now

getting around to posting it.  :)  But what better time
to get back to blogging than when you're home sick
...on your birthday...
(birthday fail!)

I'm pretty sure the last time we saw this buffet

(Part 1) it looked like this:

My initial plan was to go with a strong black top,

to counter the white and separate the white base from the

large white sink.  I got the Rustoleum Satin Black oil-based

enamel paint.  Why?  Mostly because it was one of the only

non-spray black paints that wasn't giant at my
local hardware store.

I started by painting the dresser hardware with this shiny

black paint.  You can see it really shines!

Then I moved on to painting the dresser.

At this point winter was really starting to kick in so

I had to move the painting project inside (the outside temps

were too cold for the paint to dry effectively).

Moving the project indoors was a huge pain - not only because

we don't have a TON of space to work with (you can see

that I'm in this narrow area of the mudroom) - but because

there are cats indoors.  3 of them.

3 hopelessly curious cats.

3 curious cats that decided to jump all over the top of my buffet post-painting, regardless of the barriers I tried to put up.

You can see the paw prints below.

Those pesky kittens...

So I redid it.

And redid it again.

And redid it like, 17 times.

Sanding and painting, sanding and painting.

You can see in the shiny glare that the finish 

wasn't even - I'm not sure if it was user error or the oil based paint or what, but for THE LIFE of me, I could not

get that topcoat to look good.

It was streaky, uneven and terrible.  

Stuff got stuck in the topcoat from pretty much everything I used to apply the paint - and I tried a lot of different things!  

I used a foam roller, a regular roller, a hand bristle brush and a foam brush (all several times) and not once did I get something  with which I was even remotely satisfied.

Perhaps the problem was me, but I'll never 

buy that paint again!!

The longer drying time of the enamel also gave the buffet

ample opportunity to collect as much dust and cat hair

as possible.  TERRIBLE.

So after days (weeks?) of frustration, I finally decided

to screw the oil-based paint, and grabbed some of the 

leftover Rustoleum Hammered spray paint from

the tub remodel and decided to use that.

BEST. DECISION. EVER.

(after marrying Clint, of course)

This made the project 100 million billion times easier.

We moved the buffet into the bathroom that's getting renovated

so I could spray paint to my heart's desire without

worrying about the walls or the carpet or furniture,

and we could close the door to keep the kitties out.

I'm not sure why we didn't think of that earlier.

I also went over the hardware with the hammered paint to make sure it would match, since the hammered black isn't as

strong or shiny as the enamel oil paint.

I finished the painting in just a matter of hours.

Then Clint and I spent a few days going over white areas with about 3 coats of polyacrylic (since it doesn't yellow the way polyurethane does), and also went over the black 

top with about 4-5 coats of polyurethane.

Here's some shots of the nearly finished product.

I apologize about the color - it was a little dark without

lights and not much better with the lights. :/

~tada~

And here's just a couple shots with the huge sink.

I love how well the curve of the sink fits the buffet's shape.

Part of me wants to inset the sink since its a bit high and there's a convenient lip that we could drop into the top, but we haven't made a final decision on that yet.

natural light

overhead lighting

I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out - I think it'll look great in our black and white bathroom. What do you think?