Thursday, June 25, 2009

I'm pretty much Bob Villa

Our bathroom upstairs has been looking a little worse for wear lately, with the paint peeling all over the place. We don't have a fan in the bathroom but we have two big gorgeous windows to open, which are unfortunately right at the level of the second story apartment building two doors down. Awesome. So we've had a bit of a moisture problem. Anyways, it finally got on my nerves this weekend and Jeff was busy coloring so I took it upon myself to patch up and repaint the bathroom. No problem! Done in a day! I don't need your help Jeff! Riiiight...

So this is where I started, Day One. These were the peels and drywall dings in the shower stall, that I stared at everyday while shampooing, trying to figure out how the heck you would fix it. My solution for every home ailment? Take a picture of it and march down to Home Depot, find the oldest salesperson on the floor, and ask them how to fix it. Make them take you step by step through it and guide you through the store picking out the supplies.
The fix? Putty of course! Psshh... easy peasy. This was the peeling ceiling before I scraped the crap out of it and made it smooth, again with magic putty.
The worst part for me was the ceiling because on my tippy toes, I just barely reach it with the paint roller, so I had to move around my office chair all around the bathroom and in the shower and tub in order to reach to tape everything off and scrape and putty and paint. Jeff took pity on me and helped with that during the painting stage.
Day One continued: Me puttying up the holes, then sanding the heck out of everything, then cleaning paint dust that fell everywhere... (don't worry Mom, I wore a bandana and it was fully ventilated. I took lots of breaks too.)
We think what happened the first time around, was that the painters didn't do the all-important primer paint step. We got Zinsser 123 Primer, which is mold and mildew resistant, a sealer, and a stain killer. Two coats of that bad boy and peeling should be a thing of the past. Day 1 to Day 2.
Day 3 to Day 4. This is the color we decided on: Fresh Mint, which is more blue than mint in my opinion. I was going for a daiquiri ice look. The first coat went up pretty dark, a little turquoisey even, so I cut the second coat with half a quart of the linen white we used on the kitchen. Perfection! Jeff cut it down even more for the ceiling, so while it's hard to tell from these pictures, the ceiling is lighter which makes for a nice gradation.

We thought the light blue would look really nice with the yellowish green hallway, and voila! It does.
Moral of the story? Painting is hard! Don't believe people when they say it's the easiest and cheapest thing you can do to transform the look of your house. I spent under $100 for everything (including our sassy new electrical sander!) so cheap it was I guess, but it was NOT easy. Think it will make me think twice before deciding to paint our bedroom? Nah...

1 comment:

Nikki Menda said...

What an excellent idea for taking the picture and getting help at Home Depot! Thanks for the tip!

The bathroom looks really, really great! :)