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Hello! I'm Suzannah, a serious DIYer and mom of two little ones. Follow along with my DIY fixer upper house renovations, sewing and crafty projects, real food recipes, and de-stressing goals.
I believe you can love your home just the way it is, AND have the power to design and make big changes to make it better.
I'm also the author of DIY Wardrobe Makeovers!

Custom-look vanity for less with Semihandmade doors for Ikea cabinets!: Week 5 of the One Room Challenge

The One Room Challenge project bathroom is looking almost-functional! Floor and shower tile are in and grouted, baseboards are in and everything is painted, and the vanity is even installed!! This week I want to share with you why we chose the vanity option we did and how it's working.

It is really hard to find a high quality, real wood, modern designer-look bathroom vanity for a reasonable price. Even in a smaller size like we needed for this project (48"), we had a really hard time finding good options in a warm walnut- or mahogany-look wood, midcentury modern or other clean-lined style.

One great choice I'd seen around other blogs and designers' projects is Semihandmade custom fronts for IKEA cabinets and vanities. Semihandmade has a genius business model--because the options for kitchen cabinet and bathroom vanity fronts at IKEA are so limited and not real wood, Semihandmade was born to offer WAY more options of fronts that fit perfectly on the IKEA systems.

Thanks to Semihandmade for providing these vanity cabinet drawer fronts for our review.

This is week 5 of the 6-week One Room Challenge! See the other posts about this project here: 

This week, the vanity!

A real wood modern vanity in this size is easily $1,000. Even if you get a fake wood veneer, you can't really spend less than $800, top included. I've used an IKEA vanity before (on this budget-friendly bathroom makeover) and loved it!, but the styles are pretty limited. For my clients' midcentury modern-inspired bathroom, they wanted something sleek and in a warm wood tone. We were just striking out shopping! But a lot of our inspiration images (see some here) used Semihandmade fronts on the Godmorgon IKEA vanity and looked great!

We used this IKEA vanity and top, which comes with four white drawer fronts. Instead of using those, we chose these Semihandmade fronts for the vanity in that size. That means the whole vanity--base, fronts, and sink/countertop--is $700-800, depending if you have an IKEA coupon and which fronts you choose.

We ordered 3"x3" samples from Semihandmade first, of several wood tones. We liked the look of the Walnut best initially, but in person we loved the grain and redness of the Mahogany! Plus my clients were really set on brass drawer pulls, and the Mahogany looks so beautiful and rich with them! (You can see the other options for Semihandmade doors for IKEA vanities here.)

The Godmorgon is a floating vanity. You can purchase feet from IKEA to give it extra support if you don't have studs, but we chose to mount it into studs and go footless (easier to clean, plus a great sleek look).

Here it is as we were fitting it in--LOOK HOW LUCKY we got on the plumbing placement!! Hot and cold on either side, and the drain just to the right of the center of the vanity!

IKEA vanities are not hard to build or install, though the floating element did add some complications. If you don't have perfectly placed studs and are new to DIYing, I recommend adding the feet.

This photo is of a dry fit, so we had a bucket underneath while we tested out the drawers (before all six brackets were mounted).

The sink to this vanity is slightly wider than our 48" opening, so we did have to cut away at the drywall just a little.

Here's the bathroom progress--still lots to do but really starting to look like something! (You can see the design plans for this room here.)

Here's the vanity so far. (We are still debating on the pulls. It's between some really long retro-looking ones and some shorter ones with some rounded edges.)

Picture it with a narrow black-edged mirror and round, midcentury modern look brass sconces!

We are all so thrilled with how the vanity fronts look and how custom this bathroom is feeling so far. Thanks again to Semihandmade for providing these fronts for our review!

Update: Here is the vanity in the finished bathroom!

You can find all the posts about this One Room Challenge here:

Follow along on my Instagram stories for more updates!

Remember: I'll share a blog post every Wednesday on our 6-week One Room Challenge progress. You can also follow a ton of other exciting room reno projects right now, check out the ORC blog for the featured designers and guests like me!

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