Update Your Bathroom Vanity with New Cabinet Doors

You don’t need to tear out your entire bathroom vanity to get the look you want. Just install new cabinet doors! This simple bathroom update makes a huge difference for a fraction of the price of new cabinetry.

Welcome back to Week Four of the One Room Challenge! You can see all the progress I’ve made on my bathroom remodel here. This week, the vanity area is almost complete! I installed new cabinet doors and tiled the backsplash with a gorgeous stone mosaic that pairs perfectly with the limestone tile I used on the countertop. It’s all starting to come together!

This post was sponsored by Cabinet Door Mart, Jeffrey Court, and Liberty Hardware, and contains affiliate links for your convenience. Purchases made through these links may earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you.

Our bathroom vanity was custom built to fit into this angled alcove. The cabinetry itself is pretty solid, but the doors were dated and bland. Time for an update!

Ordering New Cabinet Doors

After taking careful measurements of each door and drawer front, I headed to the Cabinet Door Mart website. They’ll customize your new cabinet doors to fit your existing vanity perfectly!

I wanted the same Artesia door style as the pantry cabinet I built for our kitchen, but this time I chose the solid wood version with a birch panel and alder frame. The back of the bathroom’s sliding barn door is birch plywood, and I wanted the grain patterns to match.

As a bonus, the beveled inset panel is an exact match to the trim I used around the recessed bathroom shelves. I’m sure I’m the only one who will notice this detail, but it makes me happy. 🙂

All my new cabinet doors arrived carefully packaged and ready for the finishing touches.

Drill Concealed Hinge Holes

You can order your new cabinet doors with the hinge holes pre-bored into the back. But the old door hinges weren’t located at the same spot at the top and the bottom, so I decided to drill them myself.

Match up the old and the new cabinet doors to check the size and to keep them from getting mixed up.

I showed you how to use a concealed hinge jig back when I built my pantry cabinet. Here’s my video of the process:

Selecting the hinge hole depth was easier this time, because I could work off of the old doors. I simply inserted the concealed hinge jig into the hole of the old door, and adjusted the dials until it was snug against the edge.

Then I measured the distance between the jig and the edge of the door, and marked the same spot on the replacement door. This tool makes it easy to lock down the dimension and transfer it to the new cabinet doors.

Clamp the concealed hinge jig down, then drill the hole.

Stain and Top Coat

I’m a total sucker for General Finishes’ gel stain, ever since I used their grey wood stain on my dining table with amazing results! This time, I decided to try their Java color, which matches the sliding barn door I made for this bathroom.

Just apply the gel stain to your new cabinet doors with a foam brush, then wipe off the excess with a rag or shop towel. Easy peasy!

Gel stain is oil-based, so let it dry for a few days before applying a top coat. I used General Finishes High Performance Top Coat. It holds up well to moisture, which is important in a bathroom!

Allow the top coat to cure for as long as possible before installing the new cabinet doors. I’m under a tight deadline, so I only waited a couple days and handled them very carefully.

Add New Hardware

While everything is drying, it’s time to shop for new door hardware! Liberty Hardware was kind enough to provide me with their gorgeous Devereux door pulls and knobs for this project. The bronze finish with subtle copper highlights matches the faucet I installed last week, and looks great against the wood.

I used this template to mark where to drill the holes for the pulls. The knobs were centered on the drawer fronts. I had to buy shorter screws for these, since the center panel is thinner than the outside frame.

Install Your New Cabinet Doors

Installing the new cabinet doors was pretty simple, since I used the same hinge placement as the old doors. I left the hinges screwed into the interior of the cabinet when I did demolition on the rest of the bathroom. All I had to do was pop the hinge cup into the hole in the door and screw it in place!

 

There should already be holes through the drawers from the old drawer fronts. Just mark those holes on the back of your new drawer front and drill a shallow pilot hole. Then screw the new drawer front in place.

Bathroom Vanity with New Cabinet Doors

What an amazing transformation! Even without the new tile, this would have been a major update to our bathroom. I love how the dark doors really make the limestone tile pop, and they coordinate with the mirror frame perfectly!

Now I need to tackle the other side of the bathroom! The tub deck will be tiled next, followed by the rest of the wall tile. But first, I need a nap!

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Things are moving right along in Week Four of the One Room Challenge! Not only did I install the new cabinet doors, but I finally started to put up my gorgeous mosaic tile from Jeffrey Court! I gave a little hint about my tile selection last week when I installed the limestone tile countertop.

The vanity backsplash and wall tile will all have this beautiful Emperador Mix Mosaic that brings together all the colors of my bathroom makeover. The coordinating dome trim caps off the edges and brings definition to the tiled spaces. I loooooove how it turned out!

 

I’m waiting until all the wall tile is installed before I grout, so I can do it all in one day. Hopefully I can get that finished this week, because time is running out!

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