Whether you have only a little bathroom cabinetry or a large vanity and other cabinets throughout the room, updating the cabinetry can refresh your bathroom in the absence of a total remodel. Bathroom cabinets can start looking worn prematurely, usually much faster than kitchen cabinets, because of all the moisture they have to deal with on a daily basis. New bathroom cabinetry, or new-looking cabinetry, can really upset a drab or boring bathroom, so explore your options.

If the whole piece of cabinetry needs updating, you can always paint the cabinet. You'll want to thoroughly clean and sand the cabinet, then prime and paint with an oil-based paint to keep the wood protected from the moisture in the room. Painting the cabinet lets you choose any color you want. You can paint the cabinet frame one color and paint the cabinet doors one or two shades lighter or darker. Or you can paint them in contrasting colors to really draw the eye to your cabinet.

You can also cover your bathroom cabinetry in fabric. This is similar to wallpapering, but the fabric is much easier to remove and there's no potential damage to the wood from the wallpaper adhesive. You can use fabric if your cabinetry has molding or a frame around the edge; otherwise, this isn’t a good option. You simply cut the fabric to fit inside the framed area, soak in starch, and rub on.

If your cabinetry doesn't have a frame, you can nail on small molding strips cut to fit so that you can fill the framed area with fabric. This is a great solution if you change your mind a lot or anticipate making a change later, because you only have to soak the fabric in warm water to peel it away. Then you can paint the wood or apply a different type of fabric. You can easily mix and match, too. Paint the cabinet frame and cover the framed doors in a complimentary fabric, or vice versa. Use fabric and then paint the framing strips for a really updated look.

If the bathroom cabinetry doors hang a little crooked, don't close properly or are in just in general banged up, warped or worn, replacing the doors can give the cabinet a new look. Paint, add fabric and embellish however you like.

Another inexpensive way to update your bathroom cabinetry, whether or not you use paint or other improvements, is to change out the hardware. Knobs and drawer pulls are something that we use and look at every day, usually without paying much attention to them. But if you really look at your cabinet and then compare it to some that you see in a store or magazine you'll notice the difference. Most stylish furniture and cabinetry have hardware that's just as eye-catching as the rest.

Going from plain aluminum knobs to glass, brushed stainless steel, ceramic, or an interestingly shaped knob can give your bathroom cabinetry a brand new look with very little money.

Photo Credits: drcorneilus

Related Posts

• Easy Ways to Increase The Value of Your Home As the housing market continues to struggle, many homeowners are looking into ways to increase the value of their homes. However, a common issue that keeps these homeowners from making improvement is the lack of availability on home improvement loans, and a lack of available funding. Luckily, there are many......
• Refacing Kitchen Cabinets: New Cabinets on a Budget Replacing kitchen cabinets can cost at least a few thousand dollars, but refacing kitchen cabinets can cost a great deal less. Refacing kitchen cabinets is a great option when you can't or don't want to refinish. If your cabinets aren't wood, you can't simply refinish them. And if the doors......
• Installing a New Medicine Cabinet If your medicine cabinet has seen better days, or you would like to add one where there is only a mirror, there are a few options available to you. It is easy to find prebuilt medicine cabinets at any home improvement store, so this article will focus on installing these.......
• How to Choose and Install Cabinet Knobs and Pulls Cabinet knobs and pulls don't really get noticed much. At least, we've looked at our own for so many years we barely noticed them. It's something that's more easily noticed at someone else's house and at the home improvement store where there are dozens of different, eye-catching kinds. New cabinet......
• How to Screen In Your Porch There is nothing quite like sitting on your porch during a relaxing evening after dinner. Especially if you're trying to dodge mosquitoes and other nasty little insects. While you may not be able to completely get rid of these insects, there is a way to easily create your own screened......

Related Websites

• How to Fix a Poor Cabinet Door /caption]One of the primary rules of home improvement is simple: conservation. If something is broken, you'll want to fix it instead of replace it. This is true for most of your household items, whether you're talking about an old bed or a faulty cabinet door. Rather than go through the......
• How to Fix a Kitchen /caption] Whenever a spouse brings up the possibility of fixing up the kitchen, it's usually the other spouse's job to think about the money (hint: I'm on the money thinking side). After all, remodeling anything your home probably won't be a cheap situation, especially the more ambitious your plans are.......
• 25 uses for dryer sheets Welcome again to Money Saving Monday here on Gather Little by Little.  Here's another list of creative uses for dyer sheets courtesy of my wife and her mom's forums.  As with my 15 uses for coffee filters, I don't have the original source to site.  Here's 25 uses for dryer......
• Self storage cabinets for a lovely, elegant touch for your home A place for everything and everything in its place: This is the mantra of the organized, tidy person. If your home is small but cluttered, you want storage space to stow your clutter in, but you don’t want to give up the floor space. There’s a way to have your......
• Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF): The Best In Green Building Technology Recently, I had an opportunity to speak with Dan Fenton of Fenton Builders in Ellsworth, ME about an exciting new building technology known as Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF). Fans of ABC's hit television series Extreme Makeover Home Edition may have seen Dan and his father Bill as they volunteered their......

Online Stores

• Entry Sets Doors Door Hardware Building Hardware Home Improvement
• Keyed Locks Doors Door Hardware Building Hardware Home Improvement
• Keyless Locks Doors Door Hardware Building Hardware Home Improvement
• Drawer Glides Slides Cabinets Cabinet Hardware Building Hardware Home Improvement
• Cabinets Cabinet Hardware Building Hardware Home Improvement

If you liked this article, vote for it on del.icio.us and stumbleupon.


Categories:

Bathroom, Cabinets, Handy Man, Project, Refresh

Tags:

absence, bathroom cabinetry, bathroom cabinets, cabinet doors, cabinet frame, contrasting colors, daily basis, fabric, great solution, kitchen cabinets, molding, oil based paint, remodel bathroom, shades, starch, vanity, Wallpaper, warm water