Almost done, only one more room to go. But that’s later, today it’s the last of the Master Bath.
Why would you put kitchen cabinets in a bathroom ? Why not. This room is big and can handle the extra height. That’s my excuse. Honestly, it’s because I could buy them all in one order from IKEA (Ramsjo). Same cabinets as in the kitchen, different color. As much as I love the white kitchen, I thought the baths needed a change, so the black/brown – or espresso color was a perfect fit.
I love it ! So, remember the pic from the last post of the catalog I liked – pretty close.
These cabinets have so much more space than the others that I’ve still not filled them. This house, for it’s size, has NO storage to speak of. There are linen closets, but now I can actually store the linens in them…and not a case of toilet paper. Yes, a case. If it doesn’t spoil, I buy it in bulk. I need space – lots of space. Now I have plenty…aaahhh!
The area behind the mirror and over to the door area is painted in a light blue color that somewhat goes with the blue in the tile border. This same color I put in the window bay beyond the tub. Above the boxes, remember I said my favorite electrician wired a box to the switch? See, the glow over the box and inside the glass cabinet – it brightens the whole room and is a set of $15 Ledberg LED’s from IKEA. They’re super efficient at 1.8w and are stuck down with double-stick tape. Fabulous!
Granite countertops came from the same place as the kitchen granite. Only this time, after the previous ordeal, I got a good deal on scraps in the ‘bone yard’. The colors look great and even though they’re not the same as the other bath, they match each other – it’s close enough.
The upper cabinet is another kitchen cabinet 40″ with a glass door and shelves. Inside the glass door, I found a sheer fabric that matches the drape panels over the tub area. ‘Found’ meaning in a closeout bin at Jo-Anns fabrics. It was put up temporary with dowels, 3M Command strip velcro and Thermobonded hems – um, that was 2 years ago – it’s still there!
Another incredible use of space is the 21″ cabinet that doubles as the hamper – oh yeah !
This came from Amazon and was worth the $38 that I whined about. We mounted it to the inside of the door and used bottom mount tilt-out hinges. To keep the basket from traveling too far, we tied the basket to a cord secured to the floor of the cabinet, and put a soft-close dampers on the sides ($5 from IKEA). This was a very good idea.
On the other side…
There’s another vanity on the other side that’s a mirror image of ‘His’ vanity setup. The exception is that instead of a hamper, my side houses all of the towels in a pull-out insert.
Gotta love those huge cabinets !! I have a lot of ‘girly stuff’ – hair dye kits, bath salts, smelly soaps for glory and I still haven’t fill the space completely. Above the towels is a basic drawer that I put my makeup in – it goes forever ! Above that space is a little spot for electrics.
A hidden plug is used for the hairdryer, so I don’t have to dig it out of a drawer or cabinet. On his side there’s one too, and the cabinet is hung high enough that the rechargeable razor just slides right under.
Speaking of sliding under, IKEA cabinets are set on a series of peg feet and are adjustable. When the tile guys started to run out of tiles, I told them to just leave the underside of the cabinets bare. They were sure that the cabinets wouldn’t sit correctly – but these are IKEA cabinets and we just raised the back feet to accommodate. Before we put the toe-kick on, which by the way just snaps in place (and out of place), we slid the extra floor and bathroom tiles for later repairs.
If you haven’t seen the site for IKEA Hackers, you should go – people are crazy. They do all sorts of unorthodox things with their furniture…and cabinets. We, bought extra cabinet doors, laid them on their sides and glued them to the tub front with construction adhesive.
Oh, you thought we had a carpenter make these? Nooooo. I’m to cheap for that. Besides, it was 90″ exactly! So 3 – 30″ doors – YES!
Over the tub I could never decide what to do with the big white space. Then I decided to both fight the height and put a column of sheers on either side. Thanks to my handy-dandy JCPenny online buying power, I found these Lisette crinkled sheers cut to the perfect length. They looked so good there, I bought another set for the water closet. So fancy.
A prettier addition to the shower is a curved tile work under the door. I rifled thru the trim tiles at HomeDepot for a perfect color match (of course I took a sample with me). This is chair rail trim – laid upside down.
Another unorthodox use is the small hand towel racks for the vanities,…they’re really toilet paper holders that I spray painted a matte black. Over stocks from HomeDepot that I found on Ebay.
All done, here’s one look. So much better than the peach valances and rattan butterflies that were there when we moved in.
(oops blurry pic)
This one was bigger but not nearly as exciting as the guest bath – that’s next up…
