Ikea Hemnes vanity and more

Hello and happy almost Fourth to ya! Do you have any fun plans for the holiday weekend? One thing is a priority for us – Despicable Me 2. We have been waiting YEARS for this and are all so excited. It’s a little ridiculous.

So a couple weeks ago I showed you the finished powder room:

Thank you for all the lovely comments, yet again! And I went back and answered your questions in the comments but I just realized some of them didn’t go through, so I’m going back again today. Or you can ask any questions here too.

I promised a more detailed post on the vanity area and that’s what we have today. I’m thrilled with EVERY part of this room but especially all these pieces. They were all brand new and I love every one.

First up, the vanity – I searched for months for the right one! I knew I wanted something with storage, most importantly. We’ve had a pedestal sink in there all this time and I was ready for something more substantial. It’s a big powder room – it can take it.

I searched both Lowe’s and Home Depot and couldn’t find what I wanted for under $300 (for both the sink and vanity). I found plenty I loved…but most of those were around $400. I had been eyeing the Hemnes vanity from IKEA but didn’t want to make the drive unless I was sure:

 

It’s 31 inches wide and has a ton of storage space. And the vanity and the sink combined were $290. Originally I had planned to find an old dresser and transform it with a sink, but I couldn't find what I wanted. So I met two girlfriends at IKEA and we made a fun day of it – a great excuse to travel for the vanity. ;)

I gotta say, I’m thrilled with it:

The sink is lovely and pretty – but really shallow. Not sure I’d love using it for washing my face in a master bathroom. But I don’t mind it at all for a powder room.

The installation was fairly easy – my Dad had never worked with an IKEA plumbing and overall he thought it went pretty smooth. All of the plumbing is installed in a way so that the drawers can close, at least they’re supposed to. ;)

When all was said and done (and installed exactly how it was supposed to be), the top drawer wouldn’t close because of one of the pipes. So I had to jigsaw out a little notch in the back of the drawer:

Not a big deal. A little annoying, but it just took a few minutes. You don’t really notice it when you open the drawer so no biggie. The GREAT thing about these drawers (other than the cutie stripes) is that they are soft close. Glorious!

I replaced the IKEA hardware with some knobs from Hobby Lobby:

For a hot second I was going to try and paint the vanity, just because I was worried there wouldn't be enough color in there. I’m SO glad I didn’t and just added a pop of color with the knobs. (You can see more about those here.)

The only major problem we had with the sink was that it only has one hole for the faucet installation – you don’t really think of that until you get to the store and realize all but about two of the bathroom faucets are for multiple holes. (Meaning there are more holes already installed in the sink.) I really wanted to reuse the faucet we had on the pedestal but we couldn’t because of that.

Soooo, after a moment of panic, thinking I would have to drive the four hour round trip to IKEA to get a faucet that worked because Lowe’s guy kept telling us they didn’t sell one hole bathroom faucets…I finally spotted one:

It was GORGEOUS. And EXPENSIVE. It was about $90 I think? Ouch, I think I actually winced. But it was between that and one other one they had, both were expensive.

I do love it though, really. I mean, REALLY love it. It’s a Moen (single hole) faucet:

I chose not to use the plate at the bottom – I just liked the simpler look without it.

I especially love that the faucet ended up matching the finish on the new light fixtures exactly:

I mentioned that I had the one light we had in here changed into two lights, and we did use an electrician. I just had the guy who did everything for the basement do it, he’s great and inexpensive and was done in 30 minutes.

If you know much about electrical stuff I guess it’s not that hard, but I’m not ready to take that leap quite yet. ;)

I did find the light fixture online, although this one is in shiny chrome:

There called the Archie Collection and I LOVE love love the vintage vibe of the glass and the pretty arch of the arm.

They are one of my very favorite parts of the room!:

So the last piece of the puzzle was the mirror, and I think I spent as much time looking for that as I did the vanity! For years I knew I wanted an oval mirror here, like we had before – but something simpler and classic. And more than anything I wanted those super cute mirror brackets on each side so that the mirror would tilt.

Like this:

I actually saw on a blog forever ago that you can actually just buy the brackets/pivots separately at Home Depot and use them to hang a regular mirror. Well I searched everywhere for them and they just aren’t there anymore. Bummer dude.

So then I found a mirror at HD that already had them and the price was about $60 – not too bad really. But it was way too small for the room (about 18 inches tall I think) and the pivot things were actually a pain in the patoot. They didn’t allow you to tighten anything, so the mirror was permanently angled down. It wasn’t going to work. (I’m sure a more expensive one would have a way to keep the mirror at a certain angle.)

Sooooo…I took it back to HD and ended up with a pretty, basic oval mirror they had for $40:

I ended up with this one because it’s the only oval mirror that had a cleat on the back – so you don’t see any of the hanging hardware. The one I found at Lowe’s had to use the little mirror brackets to hang it.

I hung it on the actual board and batten trim:

And I think it’s just perfect in there! The size is much better (21 inches tall) and it just works so well in the room – love how it all came together!

OH! And some of you asked where the “S” hook for the towel came from:

I actually got that hook at Anthropologie (one of probably three things I’ve ever purchased from there) about a year ago. I saw it and knew it would be perfect in this room, before I even knew for sure what I was going to do in there. ;)

Looks like they still sell them! You can find them here.

So there you go! All the deets on the vanity area – I hope that helps with any questions you had. Overall I’m thrilled with everything, but again I took forever to find it all so I better be! Geesh.

I’m taking the rest of the week off for the July Fourth holiday, have a lovely weekend and God Bless the USA! :)