When you are remodeling your bathroom if you can use stock cabinets and fixtures, you can keep your costs way down. The problem, however, is that you may end up with a room that looks just like any other bathroom on the planet.

There are things that you can do with these stock fixtures that will give them your very own signature look and have that one of a kind bathroom that you are trying to create. Here are some easy things that you can do to start with a stock look and end with a custom look.

Keep It Simple

Some materials are easier to work with than others are. While you can get anything to work, when you have a choice your best bet would be to choose easier products to handle. Having said that, Formica and melamine are tough surfaces to paint. You have to use an industrial strength two part paint product. It contains resin with a catalyst to bond to the smooth surface. It is hard to work with, and it puts off toxic fumes.

The other challenge that melamine types of products present is that they are constructed as a veneer over particleboard. Since the melamine veneer is simply glued to the particleboard, unless you are working with a really high end product, you may find that the product does not hold up very well. You also have to be very careful to pre-drill any holes that you are going to make or you may split the board. So as far as customizing goes, this would not be one of the better choices.

Wood is much easier to work with, and it is far more forgiving. You can give it any number of finishes from stain, to paint and you can also easily change or embellish it.

Customizing techniques

When you are trying to change the look of something, one of the easiest things to do is to give it a new finish. If you look in any craft store, you can find many different finishes. You can use a crackle finish to get an antique look in your room. For example, you can paint your cabinets dark blue. Let the paint dry overnight, and then apply the crackle medium and your white paint. You will end up with white cabinets with dark blue crackles, which will be a fabulous way to showcase your blue Delft Pitcher collection. Now you not only have a fully customized cabinet, but it specifically showcases your beautiful collection.

You may choose to treat all of your cabinets with the crackle medium, or you may choose to highlight a few cabinets and use the crackle medium on them to make them a focal point in the room. By highlighting just a few cabinets, you are making the room interesting and unique.

By using this technique on your cabinet, you can add interest and texture to a cabinet without changing your color scheme. With your pitcher collection you used blue and white to create this effect, but it will work with virtually any color theme at all. For a subtler look keep the contrast low, and for a more dramatic look use high contrast colors.

You can continue to embellish this look by adding a decoupage element. Choose pictures that enhance the theme of your bathroom, and use them to create a custom look on all of your cabinet doors. You can mix this look with the crackle medium as well and give your decoupage an antique look.

You can always finish off the custom look of a cabinet or a shelf by adding molding to it. You can also build up the front of a cabinet by attaching trim and painting. You can make your cabinet as ornate as you wish, and if you cannot match the color of the cabinet, then consider making the trim a contrasting color or simply paint the entire cabinet.

Adding molding to the top of a cabinet will give it a built-in look. You can also add molding around the bottom of a cabinet, and it will look best if it seems to wrap itself around the bottom edge. The molding can be simply attached with finishing nails and finished off with either stain or paint. Again you may choose to add molding in a contrasting color, or you may decide to make it look like a single, ornate piece by painting the whole cabinet, trim and all, the same color.