apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

If you must get rid of that medicine cabinet, I beg you, I implore you, PLEASE give it to ME! It's exactly like mine (which I LOVE), except that in your photo, it looks like the mirror part of yours is absolutely pristine! AND... if the hinges on yours work as well (not sagging) as they appear to, then I would love to take it off your hands.

Please e-mail me at generalaesthetic@yahoo.com. yes, I've painted the inside of mine, as well as the outer part, and yes, I would need to strip the paint off the outer frame of yours before I replace mine with it, but that would be fine.

The mercury of the mirror of mine, toward the bottom is slightly worn for some strange reason that I have no idea why.

By the way... I wouldn't get rid of that hamper so fast. While you're looking at how similar my medicine cabinet is to yours, have a look at what I did to my hamper. I unscrewed it out of its niche and brought it to the Long Island City branch of MAACO, the car painting folks and paid them about $250 or so to paint it with black car paint.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/artycurtis/sets/1176662/

They'll paint whatever color you like, but black or white (I did a friend's in white) are cheaper than the more custom colors.

I love your old-fashioned medicine counter too!

Can't tell from the pics - but is there room for a bigger vanity/counter? That one seems smallish.

Oh, by the way, I would just go ahead use Peel Away paint stripper to strip the hamper, although the MAACO place will probably also use even more of their own stripper to get the rest of it, if you use my suggestion. The thing is... that auto body paint is made to stand up to outdoor conditions, so it truly is ideal for the steamy environment of a bathroom. I love how mine turned out.

If you don't keep using it as a hamper, it really shouldn't be that hard to add shelves to the inside of it, though.

And about the mirror that you use to replace yours, I kind of think that that whole wall could be a mirror. If you don't do it that way, you might consider having the mirror be the width of the vanity that the sink is built into, whether it's going to be that same one you have, or another one.

I think that since you have that black line of tile inlaid into your white tile, you might consider a black frame around your new mirror about that same width, if not possibly twice as wide. If you decided to go with some kind of old fancy-framed mirror, see if you can find one with a silver look instead of gold, at least.

great bones you have to work with! You could do just about any color wall you want with all that black and white.

i think if you mirrored the whole wall around the tub, you would be spending half your time cleaning the water splash marks off of it.

I agree with the double width.

I like the metal cabinet white.

please post the afters!

A word of caution...I started to strip my metal hamper, and then it occurred to me that it was from the 40s, and so I did a lead test. It tested VERY high for lead--but I had to get down to the bottom layer to get a positive result. There is a specific Peel-Away that is formulated for lead paint, so you may want to think about that if you test it.

I also like the medicine cabinet and I don't think you should change it out. If you want to change something I would get a pedestal sink instead of your vanity and change out the lighting for something more vintage-y, and paint the walls a color you like. The mirror is adorable and has tons of character. If you absolutely must get rid of it I agree with using a beveled edge and no metal rim and having it be the width of the vanity.

OH! Find a big oval and ORNATE framed mirror, paint the frame glossy black, and hang it so the bottom is to the black tile. If you can't replace the vanity, paint the base black and replace the faucet with a lever model with a tall spout. Replace the light with something else, not sure what.

Cover the hamper with a large abstract flower and leaf design in black and pale green. I'd also paint or wallpaper the walls. I'm seeing a lot of bottle-green for this bathroom, to complement the black and white, and to soften it up a bit.

Although the MAACO people did more stripping to my hamper, I think they would have charged me even more if I hadn't stripped most of its 70 years worth of paint jobs off myself, so I did. I have no children, so I don't worry about lead paint near as much as other people.

it really depends on what kind of feel you want your bathroom to have. black and white?