Tutorial : How to Paint Bathroom Countertops to Look Like Faux Granite

Allright, here's the tutorial I promised.  I'm actually going to give you two tutorials in here.  The first one is the way I did it, and the second one is the way you should do it.  Trust me, they're not the same! (In case you missed it, click here to see the full post on the bathroom reveal with before and afters).

Before we get to the tutorial, the colors I used were :

FolkArt Acrylic Paint (Plaid series) in Metallic Pearl White, Metallic Blue Sapphire, Metallic Sequin Black, and Metallic Silver Sterling.

Allright...tutorial...

Step-by-step instructions on how I did it:

1.  Tell the hubs your just going to paint the countertops after realizing a new large vanity would run us $1000.  Tell him there's no way I could make it look much worse than it already is.  Buy craft paint from Jo-Anns.  Point : Kara.  Win.

2.  Put on trust ventaltor mask and paint one coat of Kilz oil-based primer over entire cabinet.  Do not tape a thing because you've become a much neater painter over the past few months.  Sit back and smile because it already looks a million times better!

3.  Squeeze out a dollop of the black paint onto your 'art pallet' and apply first coat on vanity in random spots using a paper towel.  Try not to make it look like a pattern.

4.  Sit back and scratch your head when you realize it looks like you just painted a cow on the top of your countertops.  Convince yourself that it always looks worse before it looks better.

5.  Add in the metallic white base in a random pattern, making sure to not overlap the two colors too much, just occasionally.  Try to convince yourself that the countertop really is starting to look better...like granite.

6.  Add in the blue paint.  Step back.  Wowzer...things really aren't looking any better.  It's okay though, you've got one more color to add on.  Convince yourself that the next step will really make it look better.  (Oh yes, and paint the cabinets China White by BM while you're at it...because you need to at least make something look better!)

7.  Add in the gray metallic paint.  Step back and realize that it looks like your countertops have leprosy or something.

8.  Decide you need another color added in and that will start to make things look better.  Mix your gray and black paint together to create a lighter black color and dab that all over the countertop.

9.  Step back and look at that.  Nope, not any better.  Decide to add in more gray and more metallic white.  Go crazy with it.  Go look at kitchen granite, come back and splatter black in little dots around your countertop all while singing this to your poor countertops : "I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell.  I know, right now you can't tell.  But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see...A different side of me".  (Your welcome for getting that song stuck in your head!  Gotta love Matchbox 20!)

10.  Step back again and look at it.  Realize that doesn't look anything like granite and the countertops are indeed crazy and unwell.  Not even close.  Decide to get smart and google "how to paint faux granite countertops."  Come across this blog and read what she did.  Then go over to her video and watch what she did.  Don't listen because your home computer doesn't have speakers installed yet (yes, I've lived here for two years...nope, I haven't gotten around to it yet!), just watch.  Realize about 1 minute into the video that you didn't put on nearly enough for your 'base' coat.

11.  Go back and add a lot of black on top of what's already there.

12.  Step back and smile.  Ahhh...finally...it's getting there!!  Oh, and do not put gloves on.  All of this :

Will wash off...and maybe some skin along with it...bonus!  It's like ex-foliation for free!

13.  Add blue back in.  Remember worse before better!

14.  Add gray back in.

15.  Add metallic white back in.

16.  Step back, think you like it, and go to bed.

17.  Decide the next day it's too busy now...add more black back in and paint seams around sink base black.

18.  Curse at yourself for not taping off the sink and spend entirely too much time scrapping paint off of it.  Oh yes, and paint the cabinets Moonshine by Benjamin Moore.  China White just wasn't cutting it.

19.  Again curse at yourself for not taping, and then repaint along the backsplash of your countertops...because you're not a neat painter like you thought you were.  Add that on top of the fact that its impossible to be 'neat' with blotting paper towels like a mad woman, and it's just a double whammy.

20.  Add a buzillion coats of polycrylic in gloss, waiting 2 hours between each coat.  (I really added 8 coats).  Do this first thing when you wake up in your pj's, then run in there and do a quick coat at lunch time, and then after work, immediately add another coat so that you can go in every 2 hours till you go to bed and add just one more coat.  Add second coat of Moonshine by BM to the cabinets.  Step back and smile.  You saved $990 by doing all of this yourself, even if it's not perfect.  Give yourself a pat on the back for trying something new and vow to research how to do things before jumping in next time.

(Yes, I know...overload on pictures.  This was a.lot of work...I have to show you a million finished product pictures!)

I'm letting it 'cure' for a buzillion weeks to make sure that the surface is pretty strong.  Really, it'll probably cure until Kalia arrives and someone stays in the daybed room.  Chris and I rarely use this bathroom right now, so it's no big deal to avoid using the countertops for the next several weeks.

Oh, and after I'm done letting it cure, I do plan on caulking around the sinks to give it a more seemed and finished look.  I did scratch some of the paint by the sinks when I scraped it off, but my solution to this will be the caulk.  I don't want to caulk it until after it's fully cured though.

Notes and things I'd do differently next time :
Minus the obvious of figuring out what the hey I was doing before starting, next time, I'd :

• Use two coats of primer instead of one.  Definitely use oil based primer for this one though!
• Make sure that my primer coat is smooth and even and there's not any brush strokes showing through.
• Use a foam brush for both the primer and sealer coats.  I initially used a paint brush and when you get in close, you can actually still see lines around the sink area.  I'd probably sand between my layers of primer and then just go for it with the foam brush for the polycrylic.
• Paint the seams with black (or whatever my base color is) and around the sink first.  That way I can add layers on top of it as I went along instead of worrying about my line being too thick.
• Most definitely tape and wear gloves.  Nothing about missing those two things was fun!!

Step-by-step instructions on how you should paint your countertops.

1.  Check your OCD at the door.  If you want perfection, this isn't the project for you.

2.  If you're 33+ weeks pregnant, go sit on the couch with some ice cream.  Stop right here.

3.  Otherwise, grab a glass of wine.  I'm serious on this one.  This project would've seemed a whole lot more sane if I had a little vino to go along with it.  Water just wasn't cutting it!

4.  Go over to this blog and watch the how-to video.  You should probably listen to the video too, I'm assuming that would help.

5.  Do whatever the video told you to do.  Seriously.  There's no way anyone else could make it any harder than I did.  Her way has to be more simple.

.....

I still do love the way my turned out though!  What do you think?  Do you love or hate the faux granite look?!

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Full Bathroom Reveal

Finally!  Kalia's bathroom is DONE!!!  Well, as done as anything is in our house (which is never for very long), but it's done enough that I'm not worried about it till waaaay after she gets here!

For a refresher, here's where we started with our blah blah beige kids bathroom :

I showed you our $85 toilet upgrade and $5 paint upgrade (seriously, love when the oops color is perfect!!  Happy Happy Joy Joy dance all around!!)...next up was removing the shower stall doors and doing something with that vanity.

I don't have the greatest picture of the doors beforehand because Chris was too anxious to get it all done to give me time to capture too much of the before's, but here's what I've got :

The doors were just old, outdated, and were going to be really annoying once kiddos started trying to use them. We ripped them out, but they left these little tiny holes that we filled with bath caulk.

 The shower curtain will hide them, so I'm not too terribly worried about it...it's good enough for now.  This shower curtain isn't staying...we need to go find one that's 84'' long for in here instead of the standard 72'', but you get the general gist of what we're going for this way!  Silly me for not measuring before picking something up!  Here's the after with freshly painted ceilings, walls, trim, eyeball light, and oil rubbed bronze toilet paper holder :

Pre-pregnancy, I would've insisted on ripping out this old tub and the tiles and redoing it all.  We did it at our first house and the difference was amazing.  However, with my due date looming a measly 6 weeks away, there's not time, energy, or money to give this bathroom more than just a facelift.

Which left us in quite a conundrum when it came to the vanity.  I literally had to put on the brakes to stop Chris from just ripping this whole thing out.  My family will find that one funny because at our first house, Chris found out we were redoing the guest bathroom by hearing a series of bangs and then seeing me walk by, while he was on the couch, with the vanity sink top on my way to the garbage.  He rolls with it all though...he just said "well, guess we're redoing the guest bathroom today!".  Yeah, he's perfect for me...I love that man!

Sorry...I digress...

Where was I?  Oh, right...the vanity.  We looked at buying one, but after we priced out what everything would cost, we decided the $1000 just wasn't in the budget right now.  We both know we can build what we want to go in here too, but oiy...I don't think my body can handle another big build right now!  So we nixed that idea too...which left us with...

Enter paint stage right.  Here's a shot of the vanity before my paint job (but after the walls had been painted) :

And here's what it looks like afterwards :

 Yep, I faux painted a granite-y look for the tops.  The cabinets got a new coat of primer, then Benjamin Moore's Moonshine paint.  It's the same paint we used for Kalia's bedroom.  I actually initially painted the whole thing with BM China White, but decided I liked the look of the Moonshine paint with all of the colors in there much better.

All of the vents / lights got spray painted white, and we painted the medicine cabinet to match the actual cabinets and gave the handle a fresh coat of spray paint.

The towel bar also got a fresh coat of oil rubbed bronze spray paint.  It blends in so much nicer now!

I bought craft paint to do the top of the vanity, so all in all, this bathroom facelift cost a total of right around $100 buck-a-roo's for the materials.

What do you think of our $100 facelift?  Do you love or hate the vanity area?  For a little less than $10, it was the best I could do!!

Wondering how I got the vanity to look like that?  I'll post a tutorial on Monday.  Promise! (Update : Tutorial is posted...click here!)

So, that's what we've been up to every.single.day this week after work...painting, painting, painting!  Ideally, we both would've loved to rip out the entire vanity or at least replace the sinks and faucets, and rip out the old bathtub and bathroom tile and update it a bit more.  But sometimes you have to draw the line somewhere!  For $100, I couldn't be more happy with our outcome.

My Dad made a comment to me this week that he thought in my 3rd trimester I was supposed to start getting tired and slowing down.  I'm tired...that's for sure...but my brain is just go go go!!  Chris said last night that he thinks I'm speeding up instead of slowing down...ha!  We've got this last weekend as a big push to get a few more projects done and then I'll officially go into relax / slow down / 3rd trimester mode.  With 6 weeks left until my due date, I think it's about time!

Happy Friday guys!  Hope everyone has a great weekend!

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Mini Bathroom Reveal

I was hoping to have a full reveal for you guys by today, but...if you've done home improvement projects, you know that everything takes longer than it should.  Especially if you're 33 weeks pregnant.

So on Monday, I gave you a sneak peak at what we'd been up to this past weekend.  On my to-do list before Kalia gets here was most definitely not a bathroom remodel, but my over-ambitious husband had other plans.  And once he gets going, he's nearly impossible to stop.  He was supposed to be prepping the hallway and kids bathroom to paint the ceilings.  Next thing I know, there goes the toilet.  Then the shower doors.  I had to run in and yell STOP before the kids bathroom got completely gutted and we had to start from scratch!  Realistically, if I wasn't 33 weeks pregnant, I would've been in there demoing the bathroom with him.  But at some point you have to draw a line!

Besides installing a new toilet, we also painted the bathroom ceiling, trim, and walls.  It's amazing what a little paint can do!

Here are a few of the before's :

The whole bathroom overall was just really lacking any personality or character in there.  Everything was blah blah beige, and since we officially have a kiddo on the way, we wanted to spice things up a bit in here .

Here's the after :

I'm intentionally leaving out the vanity area for now...you'll have to wait to see what's going on with that one!

Installing this toilet was... humorous to say the least.  Literally, we were laughing so hard we were crying.  Toilet installation is not normally all that funny, but when you've got a big huge belly and a tiny little space to try to get in and out of, things become much more hilarious.  At one point, Chris told me to reach behind him and grab the toilet and hold it up so he could adjust where the bolts were.  I couldn't get close enough to grab the toilet from him because my belly was in the way.  But...we got it done, and the new one is so much nicer than the old one!

Before :

After :

The new toilet is even one of those fancy smancy ones where you push one button for #1 and one button for #2.  We got it for $85 at Costco a little while back...not a bad deal!

The paint we used on the walls was a gallon of oops paint we picked up at Home Depot for $5.  The color is called Bleached Denim by Behr.  We already had the paint for the trim and the ceiling, and we reused the mirrors that were previously in there.  So, so far what you see here has cost us a whopping $90!  Not bad, huh?!

Stay tuned to see the full bathroom reveal...you know, one day!!

Hope everyone's having a great week so far!  Happy Wednesday!

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