Bathroom Photos

I finally managed to get the photos off of my camera. I still don’t know what the problem was but it doesn’t matter now because now, I can show you photos! For anyone who has never removed wallpaper before, it’s a pain in the ass. Luckily, we only had about two half walls of wallpaper to remove, so really that’s just like having one wall of wallpaper. Not so bad. So here we go, step by step:

Step 1: buy spray-on wallpaper remover, a scraper, and a scouring tool. I thought our scraper was a 2 in 1 scouring tool/scraper but it wasn’t, so I took my chances without it and did just fine, though I probably used a ton more spray than typically necessary. Not a big deal, unless you read warning labels where it clearly states that this product contains a chemical that has been known to cause cancer in the state of California. Alarming? Yes. But apparently only if you live in California. I live in Missouri so apparently I’ll be okay. I didn’t know cancer causing agents abided by state lines, but boy what a relief.

So without my scouring tool, I went ahead and just tried to rip up what I could with just my hands and some cancer-causing wallpaper remover. After awhile, my bathroom looked like this:

You can see remnants of the old wallpaper at the top. But why are the walls a dingy tan color? Oh that’s because there was some sort of paper-thin pre-wallpaper paper. So that had to be removed too.

Ah, there’s the wall! But WTF is that giant square cut-out? Removing wallpaper can be risky business. You never know what you’re going to find under there. Fortunately our medicine cabinet/mirror covers the eye-sore entirely so we didn’t panic too much when we discovered this genius craftsmanship.

The other part that sucks about removing wallpaper? Washing the walls. In order for the paint to adhere to the wall properly, you’re supposed to remove all excess glue from the walls and wipe them clean. This meant using a lot more cancer-causing spray, scraping and then sponging the walls with warm water. Once that dried, I taped off the white tile and put on the first coat of paint.

(see that red stuff? That’s the cancer-causing spray. It works like a charm though! The pink stuff is wall spackle to fix any holes. It’s pink but dries white. Pretty cool huh?)

And the finished product?

I’m pretty much in love with it, which is a good thing because had it not turned out so well, I’d be blaming all of you since you’re the ones that told me to paint it. Good call, guys.

And because I had caught the painting bug, I decided to do some touch-up work around the house. I started with some white paint, running around and touching up scuff marks on our white walls. Then I broke out the red paint and touched up the accent walls in our living room/dining room. As much as I love our red walls, it doesn’t take much for them to get scuffed up. But look how pretty they are with a fresh coat of paint! Dining room area:

Living room area:

Just these few simple things have me feeling 10 times better about my house. One of these days I’ll do a virtual tour of my home, but not until I have time to clean it!

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