Loralee's Fancy: Bathroom Talk

This week I have been a seamstress, a decorator, an electrician, almost a plumber, a cleaner, painter, and a stripper. Of wallpaper.

It all started because I washed our bath mats.

Now, I have washed them before—many times, in fact, in the four or five years we've had them. But this washing was the last straw for them; they completely fell apart. So I had to get new bath mats.

Off to Wal-Mart I went, and bought a lovely bath-mat and shower curtain set. Not that I needed a new shower curtain—I like my white curtain that lets a little light in—but it came with the mats I liked. On the way home I thought I can use the shower curtain to make curtains for the window. Happy thought! I got home and put the mats on the floor and they looked awful! Well, the mats looked really good (the cat thinks they are comfy, too), but they clashed with the rest of the bathroom—which was kind of an abomination anyway.

This is the 80's decor we found when we moved in: Iridescent mauve-ish, vinyl wallpaper (you can see
where a bit peeled off), brass light fixtures... And it only got worse, because I occasionally, over the year we've lived here,
would grab a corner of the wallpaper and peel it off as far
as it would go...and then leave the rest for another day.
Not too clever, I guess.

a scrap of wallpaper that I scanned—
the color isn't completely accurate, but it's close

Well, we needed the bath mats, and I liked them. There was only one thing I could do: paint the bathroom to match the bath set. So I removed the towel bars, the outlet plates, the light fixture, and the shower curtain rod, and started peeling up the rest of the paper.

Let me just say a word about wallpaper: If you are not willing to make a life-time commitment, Don't Do It!!!

Monday:
First of all, I could peel the vinyl off with no trouble, but the paper—which looked like water-stained manila construction paper—stayed behind.

Jessica, peeling off the vinyl

So I doused the wall with water and then used anything I could find—pot-scrapers, spatulas, and even a carpenter's square—to scrape the paper off the wall. This took two days. Two. Whole. Days. And then the floor was covered with scraps of gluey paper (it kind of looked like all the trees in my yard dropped their leaves on the bathroom floor), and there were still little bits of paper stuck here and there on the walls, and the walls were covered with glue.

Lindsey, scraping off paper

I spent another entire day scrubbing glue off the walls. Like I said, just don't do wallpaper.

And here was a problem: How do you remove wallpaper, that requires peeling, scraping, and scrubbing, from behind the toilet? I have removed and replaced toilets three times in my life; I'm not afraid to do it. But I really didn't want to do it. UGH.

Well, this is where the carpenter's square came in. I sprayed a ton of water behind the tank, and then started scraping with the square. It worked! If I could paint back there in a similar way, we'd be in business.

I made another decision as I was pouring water down my walls: I had the power turned off, and I looked at our outlets. Neither of them was a GFCI (safety) outlet and, besides that, anything we plugged into them would fall halfway out. This was the time for me to replace them. Playing with the electricity makes me a little nervous, even though I was the one to turn off the breaker and I tested it with a nightlight several times. But it was all safe. It was a little difficult (because that is thick, stiff wire!), but I did it. I changed the outlets myself! I also took down the brass light thing and spray-painted it white. Much better!

holding the old outlet (which is also filthy!)
and a sneak preview of the walls—
with the new safety outlet installed

Tuesday:
More stripping and scrubbing.

At last the walls were ready to paint. I decided "Parchment White" and "Rich Navy" would be perfect. I was wrong. But I'll get into that later.

Oh! And on the mirrored wall, under the wallpaper, I found this bit of excitement:

Michael and I were trying to decide how this pattern was done. Stencils? A stamp? We finally decided it was done with a roller-stamp, in kind of a dark, olive-green.

Wednesday:
So the first thing today was to put primer on the walls—KILZ primer, the fumes of which probably did some permanent brain damage. (The window was open, but still...)

Around dinner time I was able to put on the first coat of "Rich Navy." (By the way, I found a paint roller that is only 1-inch thick, which fit behind the toilet tank nicely. I was not required to be a plumber this week after all.)

first coat—I was horrified

But, the Rich Navy...Oh, man! It looked black. My bathroom was going to look like a cave. As I cleaned up the evening's paint mess I stewed over that navy wall. Finally I decided to cut the remaining paint with some of the Parchment White (which, in the store looked a nice, creamy, off-white. At home it just looked white.). Well, I added about half a cup of Parchment to the remaining Navy, and did the second coat at 10:30 p.m.(when I really should have been in bed) just so I could see how it was going to look. My new color, "Bathroom Blue," was perfect. Whew! So instead of going to bed fretting about the blue wall, I went to bed fretting about the Parchment White.

Thursday:
I had the solution in the morning: If I could cut the blue and make a perfect color, I could tint the white, too. So I went to Lowe's and bought a sample-size of "Tawny Owl" (or something like that). I mixed 24 oz. Parchment with 3/8 cup of Tawny Owl, held my breath, and started painting. It was perfect! After dinner I started removing the painter's tape. (By the way, taping and un-taping the walls might be the worst part of painting. Just so you know.) About halfway around the room I started seeing places that really needed a second coat of "Tawny Parchment," but I told myself that I didn't care; I just wanted to be finished.

With the tape down, it was now time to wash the mirror (which had wallpaper glue streaks dried on it. I'm telling you, just don't do it.), and scrub the bathtub walls which had been exposed in all their old-soapy glory all week. As I was scrubbing the bath I leaned my hand on the Tawny wall, and a spot of paint came off with my wet fingers. >sigh< I decided I'd really better do a second coat. >SIGH< So at 11:00 p.m. I did another coat of Tawny (I had just enough Tawny Owl to finish the job) and left it to dry while I slept.

Friday:
The paint is perfect! (And, surprisingly, the exact same color as the bathtub tile. Go figure.) So now I had to scrub the sinks, counter, toilet, and floor. And then make the shower curtain into window curtains. Just as I got to the last hem on the curtains my sewing machine decided to take a sabbatical; I can't get it to do anything. Dumb machine! But I did not let that stop me; I finished the hem by hand (because I am clever like that).