Tuesday, July 5, 2011

at it again.

hi again all! i realize i have been away for a little while and i keep doing that to you guys! well there are reasons, i promise! all last week i stayed at my parents' house because they were out of town. my husband and i stayed with my brother and sister for the week. we had a fun week of hanging out, shopping, celebrating my sister's birthday, playing mario, tanning at the pool and other generally fun summer stuff.

i hope everybody had a wonderful 4th! we had dinner with my parents then went to see fireworks... but they were rained out : ( sad! i hate when that happens, but people seem to think they might happen tonight instead, so maybe i'll get to see some after all : )

so if you've been reading my blog for any period of time, you know i like to use peel n stick laminate for things. it's such a great tool and i am happy we have found each other : ). well i used it to cover my cabinets in my master bath and kitchen and now i am at it again in my guest bath. the process is seriously easy. like, for real. so super easy. i have never really shown the process so i decided to this time. if you're not interested in the process of it then you can just skip to the pretty after picture : )

here is my bathroom after painting

i worked on taking out everything red and then painted in here. this is what it looked like at that point.


i still disliked the cabinets and wanted them to be different.

this is my inspiration for this bathroom

**i have seen this picture a couple places and i'm not sure where it belongs! here is the pinterest link you can follow.

i love everything about this bathroom. i love the colors so much. i love that they have a lovely grey and white background to show them off and i even love that little girl : ) it's an awesome bathroom. so since i wanted the bathroom to have these colors i set about covering the cabinets. here's how i do it.

i start by taking the doors off.


in case you're wondering, yes this is much easier with a drill. in case you are also wondering, no i do not have a drill of my own.


i take the doors somewhere with a lot of light and where i can lay them flat. sadly the bathroom is not the place for this. then i take the hinges off completely.



one should probably wipe down the doors. i don't know. i don't because i don't care that much so i just leave them as is. all that junk just gets covered right along with the door. but if you aren't lazy care more then this is the part where you could wipe the doors down.

then i roll out my peel n stick laminate with laminate face down. then i just lay my door on top.

i love this stuff because they make it so. easy. i line it up with all the little dots so i know i'll have straight lines when i cut. that's what i like to see people.


i make sure it's long enough to fold over the edges of the door

a couple inches extra is a good amount so you know for sure you have enough on each side to wrap around the edges of the door.

then you just cut away




what i like to do is then flip the whole thing over, peel the backing off and lay it sticky-side-down on top of the door. then i can take care of the bubbles that will inevitably pop up under the surface much easier, before i fold the edges over. it's much harder to get the bubbles out after the edges are folded over. i didn't take a picture of this part because well, i was holding a large sheet of stickiness. not easy to take a picture at that moment.

after that i turn it over and fold the edges over the sides



then before you fold the other edges over, you have to do some cutting to make everything lay flat and come together, like wrapping a present.









at this point all you do is trim off the extra paper that is hanging over the sides

then you are left with a flat corner. super easy. i think my cat could do this if he would just apply himself to something other than eating and taking naps....


after doing this with each corner, you are left with 2 covered doors

i forgot to take a picture of putting the hinges back on... all you do is just poke the screw through the paper and it goes right through. i screw the hinges on right over the paper, no need to cut out spaces for them.


okay, this is where the annoying part comes in. at least for me. i took one picture of it because well, it's an annoying process and i didn't want to make it longer. sorry.

to cover the rest of the cabinet, i cut out strips of the laminate to size, then stick them on. first i hold it up to the piece need to cover and make creases where i need to cut

this makes it easy to see how wide it needs to be without measuring and all that. i do that with each strip i need and put them all on the cabinet. (i hope you enjoyed my one picture of this process. i regret it's not even a very good picture.)


once you're done with this part you will be oh-so-happy and you will be left with something like this



annoying but easy. and such a better look for not very much effort.


so now i would generally put my cabinet doors back on and call it done, but i decided i didn't want my cabinets to be white. i decided to get some more color in here and paint my laminate i just put over the cabinet. it is hard to paint this stuff, and it scratches off kind of easily after it dries so i just put a coat of mod podge over the paint. i know i probably should have used some sort of finish, but i didn't want to buy anything and i had mod podge on hand. people may cringe at this, i do not care. it was free and is keeping my paint on : ) ** for those of you who are wondering, "why didn't she just paint the cabinet then, instead of this crazy process?" and the answer is that i rent, so these cabinets are not mine to paint. sadly. so to get around that, i cover it first, THEN paint! : )

the paint color was my own mixture of behr's harbor paint (which is what i have all over my apartment) and martha stewart's picket fence paint which i just used to paint the bookcase recently. it turned out a turquoise kind of color. darker than my inspiration picture above, but still just lovely. i started with the blue base and added white, but i think i should have done it the other way around to get it more like the color in the picture. i guess mistakes are how we figure these things out. but this turned out to be a great mistake.





since then i have added a few new things that i will show you all later. i know, such suspense! it is looking so pretty in there!!! just wait till i show you : )

here we go, before and after time

before



after



so for just a little bit of my time and very little effort, i have practically new cabinets in the bathroom. what did i say? that is why i love me some peel n stick laminate! come back soon to see the rest of the bathroom reveal!

2 comments:

  1. Jessica this looks great! You are so crafty and resourceful! I think it is a great idea to paint the laminate. Where do you get this awesome laminate stick, and how much does it cost? What is the condition of the cabinets after about a year when you take off the laminate? I'd like to try it, but we'll be moving within the next year or so and I'm worried about the condition of the cabinets when I go to clean before moving.

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  2. You are so creative! I told my sister in law about your blog, I'll be sending her the link soon, she lives in an apartment right now and she was telling me she wants to decorate it and what not but she doesn't know how or what to do. I immeditatly thought of you and your blog! =D I was like I will send you the link of this blog I follow, you won't believe what she is doing with her apartment. lol.

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