Makeover an old, ugly medicine cabinet into this glamorous faux marble medicine cabinet DIY for only $4 and less than 30 minutes of your day!
My condo has two bathrooms with a recessed medicine cabinet in each – it’s spacious and undeniably useful but dingy and old and tired-looking as most medicine cabinets can be, especially in older buildings. It’s yellow and plasticky on the inside and was in desperate need of an upgrade and so I went ahead and did the cheapest, and quickest makeover right after I moved in and the final product is this expensive-looking marble medicine cabinet DIY that costed $4 and 30 minutes to put together.
It was a total waste to not try to hack something into place and a medicine cabinet, as much as I’m not used to having one, is a total space-saver without the need of investing in a shelving unit.
When I did this more than 2.5 years ago, I didn’t bother writing a post about it because of how easy it was – almost like my $20 IKEA Kallax TV Table Hack that ended up being a surprisingly popular DIY / home hack on the blog.
I decided to redo the cabinet in my ensuite master bathroom and finally do the one in the spare bathroom because it’s just so sad-looking after two years.
All you need to do this DIY are the following items:
- Marble contact paper ($2 x 2 rolls)
- A utility knife and a ruler
- Smoothing tool like a credit card or a spare card
- 30-60 minutes of your time (patience is key!)
The hardest part of the entire DIY is the measuring and cutting. It is truly an exercise in patience as I absolutely dislike and hate any kinds of precise measuring (which is why, I’m at best, a half-competent baker). My first attempt at this ended up with a lot of bubble holes similar to those bubbles you get when you put a screen protector on your phone. You can use the same trick to poke a hole and flatten the bubbles out but I couldn’t be bothered and for 2.5 years, and it never ended up being an issue for me.
Amazon sells the contact paper that was incredibly popular for making DIY photo backgrounds a few years ago. I honestly disliked that contact paper because of the glossy finish. It was also more expensive than it had the right to be (CAD$15/roll when I bought it a few years ago). I ended up purchasing my contact paper from Dollarama (the Canadian dollar store) from the kitchen section. It was far more affordable at $2/roll (I needed one roll per medicine cabinet since my medicine cabinet is taller than most) than Amazon’s version and I like that it has a matte finish.
Now it’s over to you! What kind cheap makeover have you tried that refreshed something old and dated?
