I love having painted something. Painting itself isn’t really that bad, I just get frustrated easily. Switching to higher quality paints like Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams (or even just switching from regular Behr to Behr Marquee) has minimized that dramatically, especially when it comes to painting anything pure white.

Somehow the only before picture I have is from when we first toured the house. So no offense to the previous owners — this style is pretty typical in parts of Texas (i.e. tan everything, super textured walls, rubbed bronze finishes, scroll-y things, dark shiny textiles). Some of it is fine and some borders on ridiculous but none of it is really our style.

You can’t see from the picture — and I don’t have a good before picture of it (sorry!) — but on the wall on the left, behind the door, there is a random 2-by-2-foot nook, perfect for shelves. I don’t know why it didn’t already have shelves, but I do know (now) that it is comically not square (the back is about an inch narrower than the front) so it would be quite a challenge for a perfectionist. Which I’m not so it wasn’t.

I started by painting the walls pure white and switching out the mirror for a simpler one. I took down the towel rack above the toilet and installed a new bigger one on the wall across from the toilet.

Painting the vanity was pretty easy and made the hugest difference. I bought a $7 paint sample of October Mist from Benjamin Moore and it ended up being more than enough. I used one coat of Kilz primer and two coats of paint, with light steel wool-ing in between. Done and done.

I purchased a 4-by-8-foot piece of birch plywood for $50 from Home Depot and had them cut a top piece for my dining room fauxdenza project and four shelves for the bathroom nook. I ended up only using three, applying an iron-on birch banding along the fronts, and using pieces of 1×2’s (painted white) and drywall screws for brackets.

Here is the result:

Not bad for nothing but paint and some plywood, right?