The seemingly simple bathroom re-do.

This is a story about over confidence.

One day over Christmas break, I decided, you know what? The half bathroom on the main level is teeny tiny and it is annoying green and palm tree-y, I'm just going to strip the wallpaper down one night and strip the room down and tape it off and then paint the whole sucker the next day, by myself.

Well, that is not how this went. 

Here is a weird before shot of the palm trees in their magnificence. 

Here I am, tackling the wallpaper removal like a pro. Sprayed with a mix of dawn&hot water (50/50), peel top layer off, scrape the bottom off with a plastic putty knife. Rinse. Repeat. 

Kyle had a few friends over while I was weirdly standing on the toilet and counter top in the bathroom happily stripping away wallpaper. Luckily no one needed to use the bathroom while I was doing this. This process took me about 45 minutes, and I happily went to the "Ground Zero" stage of the paint job. 

Ground Zero entails pulling out all of the wall fixtures, taping and spackling. Knocked this right out the park in another easy 15 minutes.

Here is a bad color representation of our choices for the bathroom.

Here are the actual color choices. We were trying to decide between the soft blue-gray color of the foyer (which the bathroom is off of) or a fun little pop of  aqua color (that's not too crazy, since it's the adjoining rooms). Please ignore the unpainted room arch thing.

I hopped right into the painting. 

Here is some of the obnoxiously tiny crevices to paint.

I opted for two coats of primer (two on left, one on right). With the darker color, it's better to be safe, than sorry. And again, I thought I was such a pro at painting. Now comes the BEST PART! I love peeling the tape off to see those nice clean lines of the room.

But it didn't happen!

AT ALL.

Terrible terrible terrible. I was so mad. Some not so pretty words flew out of my mouth that evening.  I ignored this bathroom for a week and a half. Because it had not occured to me that the previous owner would use oil based paint in the bathroom where the same color was latex based in the foyer, I did not take the 10 seconds to rub some rubbing alcohol on and see. 

We went to Ohio and came back. I was still avoiding the bathroom. Finally, a week later, I brainstormed about what to do with the bathroom. I had no desire to sand the whole thing down, or strip all the paint off.

So, I did a cop out. 

That's right! I sanded the edges down and got a teeny tiny craft paintbrush (used previously to help paint pottery) and put some oil based primer down. Then, I painted a thick coat of Krypton (the color in there) over top and we're left with a magically fixed room (but don't look too closely or you'll see some bumps and edges in there).

Finally, the last update to the room was to replace the light and fan switch (light switch was faulty, had to be at a weird position to turn on and would just turn off by itself)

Here is a lovely in progress shot of Kyle installing the switches. I was originally in charge of holding the flashlight and passing tools, but I apparently was replaced by a roll of toilet paper. So flattering. 

Much prettier than the off cream color it was before.  I also replaced the outlet cover and light switch cover to match our newly white switches.

Ta-da! This was by far the most aggravating room to do, but I am SO glad it is done. Looks way better, I think!

Last thing to do in here is to frame in the mirror!