I finally tackled the ugly vinyl cabinet kick plate in our bathroom. While a kick plate or toe kick serves a purpose, especially in the kitchen, I'm not thrilled about the kitchen cabinet look in my bathrooms. I wanted the vanity to look more like a custom piece of furniture, so I decided to rip the vinyl off and build the bottom out, to give the vanity the look of a dresser or built-in piece of furniture. (Also see my other posts about how to update cabinets HERE and HERE)

Bathroom Cabinet Kick Plate Makeover

Let me walk you through what I did to my vanity toe kick.

Cabinet Kick Plate Makeover with Molding

This post may contain affiliate links from which I will earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
View my full disclosure policy.

Here is what the builder standard cabinet looked like before the makeover. I really dislike the cheap looking piece of vinyl the builder glued to the cabinet toe kick.

white vanity with ugly kick plate

ugly outdated vanity toe kick

When I removed the vinyl toe kick, this is what I was left with. A hardened glue mess. Yuck!

yucky kick plate closeup with dried glue

Supplies needed for the cabinet kick plate makeover

  • interior 2×4 lumber (one piece)
  • liquid nails (HERE)
  • coping saw(click HERE)
  • pencil
  • measuring tape
  • miter saw (I have an electrical one but a hand miter saw works too)
  • doorjam undercut saw (click HERE)
  • drill and small drill bit
  • finishing nails
  • hammer
  • paintable caulk (HERE)
  • decorative molding in the same height as the toe kick of the vanity – make sure to measure your vanity! (I like buying my molding at Home Depot because they let you cut the molding to the size you need and don't make you buy a large piece)

Project instructions

When I thought about how I wanted to tackle this little makeover, I noticed that the depth of the toe kick notch-out fit two 2x4s exactly. See the below photos:

how to fix a cabinet kick plate

2x4s under vanity to replace toe kick

If you are a professional wood-worker, please don't cringe, cry or ram your head against a wall. I know this isn't what you would do. So you probably should just move on since I'm just some stay-at-home-mommy doing my thing. Ok? No hurt feelings 😉 The end result looks great though.

So I attached them with liquid nails. Sometimes I just prefer using that magical glue. I didn't want to use too much force attaching them with nails or screws. It worked great!

Can you also see that I cut the little white piece that stuck out on the side with a doorjam undercut saw (click HERE). I only had to protect the side of the cabinet with a towel.

doorjam undercut saw

Then I moved to cutting out the side molding. And yes I could have (or maybe should have) removed the wall molding and cut that to size instead of doing it the way that I did it but for me it was easier this way. And I can't remove the vanity since the floor was built around it. So if we ever do something different in this powder room, it will have to be a total removal of everything anyway.

using a coping saw for under cabinet molding

I marked the profile onto my molding.

tracing molding for coping saw to replace bathroom cabinet kick plate

coping saw

And then I used a coping saw(click HERE) to cut out the shape. This sounds harder than it actually is. I have used the coping saw before for when I put up our crown molding. A coping saw is pretty easy to use and maneuver to cut out a profile on molding.

Here is what the piece looked like after.

molding cut with coping saw for vanity toe kick

I had to do this twice for both sides of the vanity that meet the wall molding.

Then I moved on to cutting the two 45 degree angles that you can see in the below photo that meet on the corner of the cabinet. I used my power miter saw but you can use a hand saw too which works pretty easy.

base molding around standard white vanity to replace bathroom cabinet kick plate

To attach the toe kick molding to the vanity,  I had to pre-drill holes on the molding for the finishing nails, then hammered the nails in and caulked all the small gaps.

nailing base molding around cabinet toe kick

After that I primed the molding one more time, even tough I bought primed base molding.

fixed cabinet toe kick

And two coats of white paint and voila here is the vanity after in white.

bathroom cabinet kick plate makeover

I also painted the walls with a cheap sharpie treatment click HERE and HERE to see more.

gold, white and mint bathroom

But to see the below finished black and white bathroom the way it is picture below, you can click HERE and HERE to see what else I did.

Don't you think the vanity looks much better without the cabinet kick plate? And it didn't cost much at all.

Tschüss

(Youleeya)

Here are more of my bathroom posts: