Painting the bathroom!!

I've been doing some work on the bathroom since I moved into the house. Unfortunately, I don't have all of the "before" pictures I probably should, but you guys will just have to suffer your whole lives knowing you don't know what my bathroom looked like before I started working on it.

The first problem happened when we turned the water on. The sink had a crack in it so if you put more than about 2 cups of water into the sink it would seep out the crack into the cabinet. The sink had to go. It was attached with this super caulk that the previous owner must have bought in bulk because many things are attached to other things with it in this house. I am not a fan of this caulk. In the process of trying removing the sink from the counter it broke into many pieces, most of which came off of the counter but some did not. Since the counter was the typical rose granite you see in new constructions and had no business in a mid-century modern bathroom we decided to replace it with a new countertop from the hardware store. We then removed the counter and unusually tall backsplash only to discover a gaping hole behind the backsplash. We patched this gaping hole with a piece of drywall and started to move on with life.

In my first week living in the house I came to realize that the bathroom had no towel rack. This wouldn't be so bad, but I then realized that there was absolutely no place in the entire bathroom for a towel rack. There was an unusual mirror behind in the front of the bathroom next tot he back of the bathtub where a towel rack would make sense so I took a look and found that the mirror was on hinges and they had punched a hole in the wall from the bathroom to the hallway closet. They had put up plywood dividers in the hallway closet and were using it as a medicine cabinet. 

Below note the bathroom photo wherein there is no place to store anything in front of the sink and there is no place to put a towel rack except for the green patch seen in the mirror that used to be a "medicine cabinet" I will be replacing the large mirror with a cabinet from Ikea for storage.

A closeup of the patch:

 For your reference, this is what we like to call an "escalating commitment" project. You can expect pretty much every project you do in an older house to have escalating commitments where the project gets more and more complex but you're committing to completing the project, so all you can do is forge ahead.

So, after a few weeks' work patching this and that everything is mudded and ready to paint. The rest of this blog post will be a bit more detailed about how to paint a bathroom. Keep reading because there's another escalating commitment for your enjoyment :)

So, the first step is to clear out all your stuff. Take your time to do this people, you don't want paint on your shower curtain.

Next, take the time to remove all light covers and vents. They will not look better painted, no matter how much you wish they would and they are very easy to remove with a flat head screw driver. 

Hmmm.....this light switch cover is overlapped by the molding, I guess I'll have to remove the molding. Not to worry, it's easy to do because the proper way to install molding is with finish nails and it's easily pried off.

well, this molding appears to be screwed in so I'll just start with the top piece because it's the smallest and I'll get an idea how everything is attached.

well crap, not only did the molding break in half, but there's quite a bit of damage behind it. My commitment has just escalating. How did I break the molding off like that? With my bare hands ladies, with my bare, manly hands. Was that a smart thing to do? No ladies, no it wasn't.

An aside on demolition work: Demo work takes much less time than putting things together so even though it's easy to get into the heat of the moment and start tearing everything down, before you know it you've got the bathroom down to the studs and it's going to cost a few thousand dollars and a few months to fix and in the meantime you have no place to take a shower.

So, I slowed down, found the screws and carefully removed the rest of the molding without breaking it. There was quite a bit of damage to the wall around the door, the door isn't put in quite right, and the "molding" is actually just some pine so I'll be replacing it, but taking it off slowly prevented further damage. By the way, if you have to use the massive amount of caulk on the molding in the following picture, you're doing something wrong .

Now, on with the painting! (I'll probably have to do some mud and repair and paint around the door, but I can save that for later)

The next step after clearing everything out is to clean the walls to get rid of any debris and mask anything you don't want painted.

You don't need to mask, in fact my brother who does maintenance at a children's museum doesn't mask but it's a tradeoff. It takes time to mask, but you've got to paint slower and more carefully if you don't. If you paint all the time like my brother does, I bet you'd get fast enough that it wouldn't be worth it to mask. If you're a mere human like me, you should mask. If you're not sure if you should or not, my suggestion is to go ahead and mask on your first painting job. If you can paint the room without getting any paint on your masking tape then don't mask next time. This is highly unlikely :)

It helps to put drop cloths down to catch drips, if you don't have any you can buy plastic at the hardware store or use old towels.

Next, paint away! A few tips:

1. Don't move your roller or brush too fast or else you'll get splatter
2. Try to find that balance point where you're getting as much paint as possible on your brush or roller without dripping
3. Take your time, rushing will just give you time consuming cleanup
4. A pro can probably paint in one coat, but I have to use two. Don't worry, the second coat is always much easier
5. Don't paint over tacky paint, it will pull up the paint and make a mess. Wait until it's dry to the touch.
6. When using the roller, use smooth, long strokes with plenty of paint in the roller. 
7. If your roller is leaving lines by the end of the roller don't worry, just roll over them and they'll go away. 

Here's a photo of the finished bathroom (well, almost, I need to do the door molding and install a towel rack)

I hope you enjoyed the post and happy painting!