What I Did Today

I have a confession to make. Sometimes I tend to bite off a little more than I can chew at one time. Of course, if I had more time I really could handle it all...

Our new house needs a little updating. In this case, let's talk about the main bathroom. When we bought the house it had this brown shag carpet on the floor, which just had to come up. I think carpeted bathrooms are unsanitary. So all along we had planned to do a quick fix for the bathroom floor. Simple and easy. Then I went to Habitat for Humanity's Renovation Station store last Saturday. I came home with a bathroom vanity and ceramic top. I thought to myself, "Self, you could replace a bathroom vanity - there's nothing to it! Just screws, nails, and glue. And you have to disconnect the pipes, but how hard can it be?"

You see where I'm going with this, right? I couldn't even figure out how to turn off the water to the house! Fortunately, there's a guy we know from church... so he's going to do the actual vanity-replacing part Tuesday night and I get to focus on the stuff I really love: painting and decorating. This was my project for today (in my mind it's still Monday because I haven't been to bed yet.)

As you can see in this picture, the girls and I already pulled out the carpet started taking up the old tiles. At 11:30 this morning, this is what I started with.

Less than 2 hours later, I had taken up the floor tiles, removed the towel rack and mirrors, stripped the bulk of the wallpaper, sanded the walls, taken the door off it's hinges, and scraped off the rest of the floor tiles. Oh, and I removed the shoe molding and the splash guard, too.

This is what the floor looked like after all my sanding. As a funny side note, when I got in the van to leave I noticed that my nose hairs were all white and coated with wallpaper shavings. Real attractive...

By 2:30 I had painted 2 coats of oil-based primer on the walls and paneling. I have come to the conclusion that I hate oil-based anything. It doesn't come off. No, I'm not going gray... I bent over to dip my brush and my head hit the freshly painted wall! How am I going to get THAT out??

After working on other things with the family this evening, I went back over to work on the bathroom. I got there about 9:00 and by 9:40 I had painted the paneling and realized that I needed a new plan for the top half of the room. So off to Walmart I went! Fortunately, I found the most ADORABLE bathroom decor to use and picked another color of paint to go with my lovely shade of bright blue. I was back to painting by 10:30 and by 11:30, I had finished for the night.

Here is the same bathroom (with wet paint!) 12 hours later. Just wait till the new vanity goes in tomorrow!! Then I just have to touch up paint, tile the floor, and rehang the mirrors and towel racks. I can't wait...