1950's Bathroom revamp with Akurum

Materials: Akurum, Numerar, Fullen, Perfekt, Metrik

Description: I wanted to update my 1950's bath with modern fixtures that would mirror the style in the rest of the house (plus the sink faucet would no longer turn off).

Before

Our kitchen was being remodeled with Ikea components and we scored 20% off our kitchen purchase. I was hoping I could use kitchen components in our bathrooms (see my other hack) to score a great deal on modern cabinetry. When I measured the size of the existing bathroom sink and vanity, lo and behold it was exactly the width of the largest Akurum Top Refrigerator cabinet. Perfect!

I assembled the cabinet per the instructions and attempted to install it. However, I quickly discovered that the cabinet was too deep for the space. So, I cut down about 3" off the back of the cabinet and then attached it to the wall with L-brackets.

In addition, as much as I love the look of floating wall hung cabinets, which would be easy to do with the Ikea wall cabinet system, I wanted to cover any tile damage under the existing cabinet, so I chose to mount the Ikea wall cabinet as if it was a bottom cabinet. I added Akurum legs to it and covered them with Perfekt plinth (toekick). Luckily, I had this leftover from the kitchen remodel.

As the birch cabinet is slightly darker than the birch doors (with Metrik hardware), I also had to add the Perfekt cover panels to the sides of the cabinet. This was easy, since again I had some leftover from the kitchen remodel.

Lastly, the countertop is an extra piece of Birch Numerar counter leftover from the kitchen. I sanded it down a few times with coarser to finer grit sandpaper, foam brushed on two coats of India ink. Then, I wiped on 6 coats of Waterlox on the upper and lower side, sanding and waiting 24 hours between coats.

The sink, faucet, and drain, like my other bath hack, are from overstock.com and were a steal compared to big box stores.

I also had some nasty rusty holes and marks left behind in the tile backsplash area. I covered these up with a craft piece of curly maple from my local Woodcraft store and mounted it in the backsplash. It will also be Waterloxed and caulked up.

To polish it off, I took down the rusted medicine cabinet and covered up the hole in the wall with the Fullen mirror ($10!).

New lights, toilet and a DIYed roller shade completed the remodel. Because of the sale, and leftovers from the kitchen the sink and vanity cost less than $300. In fact, the cost to refresh the entire bath only cost about $450 (plus my sweat along the way!).

~ Lemurific, Cleveland, OHio