Getting There

I sanded, I spackled, I primed for about 6 hours straight.  And today I painted.  For hours.  wow.  I had no idea this project would take so long.  I got paint everywhere.  But it is latex paint so it came up pretty easily with a sponge.  It looks so much better than that crusty old wallpaper.  I'm not finished yet, though.  I now have a leaky toilet from removing the tank to paint behind it.  I'm headed to Home Depot now.

Ugly Cabinets That I Am Afraid to Change

OK, so I take liberties with my lease when it comes to improvements. I'm painting the bathroom, for example. However, no one in their right mind would say I should "preserve" the hideous, soiled, drooping wallpaper from 1982. And I chose a clean neutral for the walls, so who could complain. But now I'm turning my attention to the elephant in the room. Those wooden monstrosities some might call cabinets. I don't know what to do. If I owned the place I would sand them, paint them white, and attach lovely turquoise crystal knobs. I read a blog about putting fabric over the cabinet doors. To be honest, it didn't really look that good. It looked like someone had a weird idea to draw attention to a cabinet with some ugly fabric. So I think the only safe route is contact paper. I found one in turquoise and white. I think I'm going to put it over the middle panel and paint the hardware the same Informal Ivory as the walls. But I'm getting ahead of myself here; I need to finish priming first. Lord my load is heavy.

Local Austin Furniture Diva

This local chick transforms some seriously icky stuff into beautiful furniture: http://www.gussiedupfurnishings.com/index.html

She had great before & after pictures!

I Primed, Therefore I Am

I primed tonight. I got a special Behr primer that is made for sealing drywall. I can't paint straight over drywall. It will sort of soak in and look stupid and I'll try to do 3 coats to fix it. Nah, think I'll just do it right the hard way and use a good primer first. Here is a pic of my primed (and slightly less hideous) bathroom.

Status of the Wallpaper

I threw all that hideous wallpaper away. So I had to spackle (I had never done this) because bits of the sad, sad, untextured drywall underneath the wallpaper was not perfectly smooth. So I spackled with a 4" plastic putty knife. I squished that stuff all around and didn't worry too much about making a mess because I knew I'd have to wait 5 hours and then sand it. I spackled on Sunday, sanded on Monday, vacuumed & started priming on Monday. I am so exhausted. I don't know how people have the stamina to do big rehab projects over a weekend. They must have adolescent children they enslave. That's what my mom had me for. Here is a picture of my spackling job.

Oh. My. God. Most Hideous Bathroom EVER

The upstairs bathroom in my place was DISGUSTING. And it's pretty roomy, too. Oh Lord. I won't go into the grossness. Just know I had yellow latex gloves and lots of 409 going on in there. This is the 1982 wallpaper. Yes, that is the color. And yes, those are 2 non-matching towel bars. Had to GO.

My biggest fear was that I would be taking a shower and the wallpaper would finally give up, peel down, and touch me while I was naked.

Yes, that is a bathtub full of wallpaper. Soooooo satisfying.

This is Rodney

This is Rodney the JRT. He is my mascot.