How to build a bathroom vanity

Today I'm going to be showing you how to build a bathroom vanity.

I love the look of a floating sink. However, I don't love the look of a floating sink with unsightly plumbing. That's why I decided to build a bathroom vanity. Before we get started on how to build a bathroom vanity, I wanted to touch base on our current bathroom dislikes from our previous renovation. Then I'll get into the actual building tutorial.

Bathroom mistakes:

1. Our wood slat ceiling- It was the wrong color for our space, making our already small bathroom appear smaller.
2. Our MDF recessed shelf- The material was not a good match for a steamy bathroom.
3. Top of shower- We had our wood slats flush with the shower to hide all the imperfections.
4. Vanity- We loved our floating sink, however we didn't love seeing our exposed plumbing.

We've slowly been changing out our dislike list with the visions we love. These visions better match our personal style and overall aesthetic of our home. Recently we replace our MDF recessed shelf with this diy bathroom shelf, including custom drawers Scot and I built! I can't believe how much better the shelf looks in the bathroom!

Another thing I removed from our master bathroom was the wood slat ceiling. The wood slats and nail holes left quite the cleanup, however the bathroom looks so much brighter now without the stained wood slats. I framed out our bathroom fan with these pieces of wood from Home Depot to hide the recessed ceiling fan. I ended up painting the pieces the same color as the ceiling and walls so it blended in a little better.

To fix the top of our shower I purchased these inexpensive pieces from Home Depot and framed around the top of our shower. I spray painted them with this spray paint to match the existing trim in our shower from The Tile Shop.

How to build a bathroom vanity:

Now for the vanity. I knew that I didn't want to invest alot of money into the vanity so I did some exploring in our scrap wood stash and came up with a game plan. I knew for sure that I wanted the vanity to have both texture and lines. After doing some research I determined that this was the perfect piece of trim for this vanity project.

I had a large piece of leftover beadboard from our hallway, so I decided to use that as my base for my trim pieces. Essentially all I had to do was build a hollow box to fit around our floating sink. The only issue we were going to run into was the fact that our plumbing was slightly off center on the left side of our sink, which meant I had to build a "countertop" on the left side to accommodate. Doing this actually benefited us because that gave us a place to put our soap and any other toiletries that wouldn't fit on our sink.

Let me break down how I built this vanity. First let's start with the building materials.

Materials:

1. Beadboard
2. 1x2
3. Wood glue
4. Corner braces
5. Oak 1x2's
6. Oak 1x6
7. Silicone Caulk
8. Screws + Anchors
9. Paint
10. Poly
11. Tape

TOOLS:

1. Circular saw
2. Tape measure
3. Drill
4. Nail gun

Alright, let's get to the build shall we! First, are you excited to see how we built our own custom bathroom vanity using scrap wood? We hope this how to build a bathroom vanity tutorial is inspiring and helpful for your bathroom!

The first thing you'll want to do it measure your sink for your vanity. Once I took our measurements I cut down our beadboard using our circular saw. Since the beadboard is thin, you'll need some corner supports. I took measurements of the inside of our vanity box and subtracted an inch from each cut so they didn't show. Then I grabbed some scrap 1x2's and made the proper cuts.

After securing the 1x2's using our nail gun we had a hollow "box" to fit underneath our floating sink!

The next thing I did was grab some of my oak 1x2 boards and begin 'framing' the outside of the hollow vanity box. First I held them up so that I could get a good visual of what it would look like. I knew that my trim pieces would sit below the oak 1x2's.

Because this was in the bathroom and prone to water marks/drips, I decided to poly over the wood a few times to give it a solid coat prior to installing the trim pieces. This will protect the wood from any water contact.

Now that the hollow box vanity was complete, the poly had been applied and dried, it was time to hang the vanity on the wall. I used these corner braces to hang it on the wall. We ended up only hitting one stud, so we went ahead and supplemented with drywall anchors.

Here's what the box looked like right before we hung it on the wall. Notice the two corner 1x2 pieces of wood, and the two side 1x2 pieces for corner brace support.

We decided to add our corner braces directly to our hollow box first. This wasn't the original plan, but our anchors were SLIGHLY off, so instead of removing the anchors, we adjusted our braces instead.

Below you'll see the placement for our drywall anchors before securing our hollow vanity box.

In order to attach the vanity to the wall, Scot had to secure it from underneath. Which brings me to my next point. When deciding on the vanity design, we knew it would be important to leave the bottom of the vanity open, that way if we ever encountered a plumbing issue we could easily access it!

The photo below gives you a good visual of what the left side of the sink looks like. The vanity had to extend past the sink due to the off centered plumbing. Can you see where I added the "countertop" now? You'll also notice we added a few extra oak 1x2's on the back wall for countertop support.

I grabbed our oak 1x6 to see how it would look on the top as a counter top and it fit perfectly.

We ripped our 1x6 counter top down, and framed out the top with oak boards, filling all gaps with wood filler. Clearly I was excited to style the new vanity, because I took a photo with a soap dispenser on it.

Here's another angle of the vanity so you can see how it boxes the sink in from below.

Now it's time for the finishing touches! We grabbed all of our fluted trim pieces and cut them down to size, attaching them with our nail gun!

You'll notice the fluted pieces have two sides, a rounded side, and a squared size. I used the square side on the outside of our vanity!

Here's a progress shot of the trim pieces being installed. I am OBSESSED with these lines, guys. Obsessed.

Here's a pullback shot of the vanity once all of the fluted trim pieces were installed. Peep that DIY recessed wood shelf, too!

Finally, we I had to do was add wood filler, more poly, silicone caulk, and paint! Here's how the vanity looks now that it's completely finished! These are both edited and unedited so that you can see the true colors of the finished product.

Edited:

Unedited:

Edited:

Edited:

Hands down my favorite time of day for this space is in the evening. Check out how gorgeous everything looks once the sun starts to set on the back of our house!

I couldn't love our new DIY bathroom vanity build more. It's everything we could've dreamed of and more. It was extremely cost effective, and looks like it's a brand new expensive piece of furniture that we invested in. What do you guys think? If you loved this how to build a bathroom vanity post, then make sure you check out our other DIY projects! We share our projects on Pinterest, too! We'd love to have you jump over there and give us a follow.

If you want to save this DIY vanity for later, make sure to pin the graphics below to your Pinterest boards! For more behind the scenes hop on over to our Instagram account!