DIY NOOB STYLE!

February 10th, 2016

I'm not one to wait until I've been shown how to do something to try it. Can't say I really do a bunch of research either, I mean, how hard can it be anyway, right?? Might call that crazy, might call it "asking for it", you know, you might.  I, however, call it MOTIVATED! 

So, recently I was "motivated" to give the guest bath a bit of a face-lift. I jotted my list of what I'd like done in there and made my trip to Home Depot.

* Sanding paper, for the handy (ancient) palm sander
* baseboard moulding
* crown moulding (have some of that in the garage rafters, I'm sure it's still juuuuuuust fine)
* Paint, of course
* Oooooh!  Primer, cause That nearly neon blue isn't going without a fight. 

It's like an Easter egg!

* paint brushes
* white light switches, outlet covers

Yup, sounds good. 

Now, Home Depot with five kids doesn't sound like a walk in the park, even if you are fairly used to dragging an entire herd of children around with you everywhere you go so I drug my parents along. Went something like this:

Me-            "so, lets get real wood baseboards, you know, cause, bathroom...water...stuff."
Parents-    "did you measure the walls?"
Me-            "nope."
Parents-    *silence*
Me-            "eh, we'll wing it."

We laid on the flood and "visualized" how long we thought the walls in the bathroom were. Turns out we're pretty good at that. 

Baseboards attained, rest of list as well, OFF I GO!!

Now, painting is mah thing. I like it, I'm good at it, and lets face it, when you're just primering everything in sight it's not a big deal.  I taped off the vanity, threw some plastic over the toilet and grabbed me a pack of baby wipes for floor drips.  
(Those baby wipes are amazing btw, I don't know how people without kids survive. Baby wipes pretty much single-handedly pull us out of the dark ages. I've used them to clean every surface of a human and my home!)

Anyway, got that primer up and then painted the walls. I'm a mean line painter, so getting in those good clean lines at ceiling and wall and around the vanity are right in my game. I don't use tape cause it just leakes all under that stuff anyway no matter what you do. Textured walls torment like that. 

Trim went pretty smoothly too.

Here's a little tip on keeping touch-up paint handy!

Then the baseboards.  Now, I've never cut base or crown moulding before, so I bought this neat little jig. 

This is SUPER handy, by the way.

I drug my board, the jig and my dad's table saw out and set it all before me...and stared at it.  The instructions on the jig looked like it was super easy, I mean, there was only three pages to it so it HAD to be, right??  But then there were words like "spring angle", "wall angle", "bevel", "miter", and "right" and "left", which to be honest, I have a hard time with as it is, and then there was the saw.  I mean, if ever someone was going to cut their hand off in a tragic accident of arrogance, it was bound to me and I knew it. 
Ah well, deep breath and DIVE IN! 

*I went through an entire 16 foot crown moulding board just trying to figure out how to make a single corner fit correctly. I'm glad I had that stuff up in the garage already.*

So, once I got that figured out it went alright. The crown moulding up in the attic had warped a little, but, you know, wavy crown moulding adds character right? It'll nail right up to the wall and straighten out.
    I couldn't find a stinking stud to save me. I got so frustrated at one point that I started throwing a nail into one baseboard every two inches, except for, hilariously, turns out the brad nailer had stopped up and no nails were being put into the boards at all, just nice little nail-looking holes. That was fun. Thank goodness for wood putty. OH!, and also, turns out studs only run every 16 inches or so on an interior wall, so those wavy crown moulding boards...well, I ended up over-bending it over my kitchen island to try and smooth out the waves, but honestly that works about as well as pressing crumpled paper to try and "smooth" it out again, so, lets just say I got a little creative with wood putty and caulk. But, it turned out. 

Also, I put the crown moulding on upside down. Stupid spring angle threw me. You win this round math, but I'm watching you. 

This is my beautiful UPSIDE DOWN crown moulding.

Now, I had to take a few days break here, kids, appointments, all that, and I have to point out a tiny little thing that I didn't really think about when I started this project. I thought to myself "Ah, this aught to only take a couple days, maaaaaaybe three at most" and I literally packed up the entire bathroom in not-so-easy to get into boxes that got stuffed out of the way. That wouldn't have been a real issue, except that the project actually took me nearly a week working around who could help out with the kids and other stuff and that the packing included our toothbrushes. We basically went a week without brushing our teeth. My kids breath could kill a rhino and I know full-well that floss, mouthwash, and gum is not even touching my coffee breath; Sorry world (and preschool teachers). 

SO! walls done! I felt like I was winning the battle of the bathrooms at this point, the rest had to be gravy. I grabbed my hand sander and went for it!

Now my hand sander looks a lot like this guy here,

Not my hand sander

except for that little bag-like thing on the back end. And you know, turns out that thing is real, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeal nice.  I thought to myself that I could totally just use the shop vac hose and hold it under my armpit while I sanded. It would probably work even BETTER!  It didn't by the way. Not even a little bit. Actually, I gave in, put on a dust mask and resigned to vacuuming and then wiping down the entire room from ceiling to floor when I was done, which I had to do. It didn't not suck, meaning it sucked. Oh well, CLEAN WALLS, never mind I just painted them so technically they were already clean. Moving on.

Sanding done, I got my tack cloth out and wiped down the entire vanity, cupboard doors and drawers. I forgot to put on gloves though and got to "reward" myself with a lovely salt scrub to get all that sticky stuff off my hands.  It mostly worked.  But, on the positive side, turning pages is like real easy now. 

Cause this is what licking fingers to turn pages kinda feels like.

Put the stain on with a lint-free cloth and that part actually went really fast and easy.  Then I decided that spray polyurethane would be WAY easier than painting it on, so I bought some low-overspray product and cardboard and went for it!

Don't use that stuff people. Low-overspray is like saying "low-mess" or "easy-clean up" in reference to any art item for kids, or "easy to use" child safety lock: we all know those are only easy to use for the kids and confound the heck out of us adults. I had sticky feet that only nail polish remover and a solid scrubbing helped, and I have slightly shinier patches on my walls now. Fortunately for me bathrooms tend to have the crummiest lighting in the world so that we never know what we ACTUALLY look like after we've put on our makeup each day. It's like a fun guessing game of how much blush is too much. 

This is what we're going for, right?

Also, my daughter who runs faster than me at 2 ran in there and walked all over the not-quite-dry cabinet doors and now they have some adorable little foot prints in the gloss. 

Aren't those cute little toe prints adorable!

Welcome back crummy sander. 

Oh ya! In-between all of these little simple check-marks on my list, were a few little fun helpful moments from my kids. 
    1:    My daughter found my marking pencil and drew a masterpiece INSIDE the toilet...below the water-line. Honestly, I still haven't brought myself around to scrubbing it out. I see art everytime I go to pee.  My talented beast. 

Frame-worthy, I know.

    2:     My son found same said pencil (I know, I should learn the first time) and contributed his artistic talents to the freshly painted wall and door frame.  Cool thing about that semi-gloss paint though; it came right off with a wet washcloth!!  I love you semi-gloss. Might even have convinced me to paint my remaining rooms in high-gloss glare-right-in-your-eyes paint. Maybe then marker would wipe right off too.  I can dream, right?

Oh ya. Lets not forget there are dogs here. 

Thanks guys. Thanks.

Here I took a "break" to play electrician and swap out our old wall light for a new one. I'm not a fan of "gold", so it was replaced with brushed silver. and the switches and outlet got a face-lift by replacing the lovely 80's yellow ones with bright white. That actually almost made me cry happy tears. Those were so ugly. Then I went back to that "easy" vanity project. 

Oh man, that is massive improvement for cheap, for real.

So, painting on polyurethane is much smoother, especially using a sponge paint brush.  That was a WAY better idea, and actually markedly cheaper. 
Put hardware and stuff back together, finish caulk (did I say that I LOVE caulk) and voila!! SHINY NEW BATHROOM!!

I don't have a "before" picture because, like I said, MOTIVATED! (I forgot)

It looks new!

Totally worth it. And now that I'm an "expert", I'm moving on to the laundry room next.  It's going to be awesome.