The House: The "Easiest" Room, Part 2

Now that the bathroom was completely dismantled including the flooring we were ready to put it all back together. First thing on the list was painting. I used a paint sprayer to put primer on all the walls. Being in such a small room spraying paint left me a little painted myself.

We still had a few rough spots on the ceiling and walls so we decided to add a little sand texture to our paint. Both Meric and I are fans of white ceilings so all of our ceilings are being painted white. We got what looked like a light grey paint for the bathroom walls. (All of our indoor paint colors came cheap from the mis-tint section of Home Depot. Can't beat $9 a gallon.) Once the paint was on the wall it turned out to be a more of a light blue grey. I love the color and think it looks better than the grey we thought it was.

Another thing that needed to be painted was the shower. Yes I said painted. We found a tub and tile paint that got really good reviews. It was a lot of prep work, including the patching. Meric spent a lot of time patching and sanding to get the section smooth. I was nervous about painting the shower but I followed the directions to the letter and it turned out great. I was amazed that a paint would look so good on a shower.

Before

After

With the painting all done we were ready to install the flooring. We actually picked a heavy duty peel and stick vinyl tile. We picked it because it was fairly easy to install, looked great and could be grouted. Once grouted you can't tell that it is just a peel and stick vinyl.

Next came the sink vanity. Should have been an easy install. Just put it in the spot the old vanity sat. Well if it were easy it wouldn't be one of our projects so... it wasn't that simple. Our walls weren't exactly straight so some modifications needed to be made to the back of the vanity. Meric (with Mel's help) sanded down the back of the vanity so that it could be successfully placed in the bathroom.

The finishing touches were installing the trim and towel bars. With those touches done we officially finished a project! It took longer than we wanted it too but the results were worth it.

The House: The "Easiest" Room, Part 1

The first room we decided to do was our bathroom downstairs. It is the smallest room so we figured it would be the easiest. Boy, were we wrong.

It is the smallest room in the house but it was also the ugliest. The walls were painted a horrible dark salmon color. Not only were they painted an atrocious color but they were painted over wallpaper that someone had attempted to remove but damaged the sheet rock. The walls were awful. The vanity was original to the house and a dark brown color. Years of abuse were very apparent in water damage and leaky faucets among other things. The dark colors and the dirty popcorn ceilings made the small space feel even smaller.

First thing we did was gut the bathroom. We took out the vanity, mirror, light fixture and toilet. With the space completely empty we went to work on the walls and ceiling. We got lucky on one wall that had all the wallpaper still intact. When we started to peel the paper back it came off cleanly. The rest of the walls were not so easy. We tried a few different paint removers and tediously scraped and peeled off the paint.

Once the walls were cleared of paint and the ceilings popcorn free we started mudding. Mudding is so much fun! (Sarcasm font) We mudded and sanded and mudded and sanded and really should have mudded and sanded some more. It was crazy how much work it was to get such a small room ready for paint.

When experimenting with paint remover I accidently spilled some in the shower. Not a big deal except some didn't get cleaned up and it ate away the shower. I was pretty upset with myself for adding yet another project to our list. After doing a little research we decided that replacing the shower was way more than we wanted to spend and for less than $10 we could get a putty that would patch the holes and be sanded smooth. Of course it was dark grey in color so we needed more to the fix but more on that in the next blog.

Another problem with the bathroom was ventilation. Neither of our bathrooms had fans. Personally I think a bathroom fan is a must, especially when we live in such a humid climate. The problem with installing a ceiling fan in the bathroom is trying to figure out how to run the wiring to the switch and the ducting to the outside without a crawl space to work in.

We figured out a solution: go through the stairs. Easiest room in the house and we had to take out a stair. It worked great for us to run wiring by reaching through the open step. 

We got flexible ducting and while Meric shoved it through the hole outside I pulled it through the hole inside. (I don't think we have had a home yet that Meric didn't drill a hole through for one reason or another.)

With the wiring and ducting ran we were ready to install a fan and put the bathroom back together.