More Before and Afters- Let's start with the bathrooms

If you read my post "want vs. get" you saw some the things we have done to the house. We have rehabbed other rooms in the house besides the kitchen, and I started with the bathrooms because they were the most offensive to my decorating taste. 

I think the first room that I did after we moved in was the boys' bathroom. It was covered in this awful wallpaper that looked like an 80 year old woman picked it out, and I just couldn't do that to them.

Here's the before on the boys' bathroom

Here are the "Afters"

 I left the brass on the light fixture and the towel holder. It went more with my "nautical" theme.

This is the ceiling. It doesn't seem very impressive until you consider that it started off with "popcorn" texturing. I hate that junk, so it had to come off.

Now, if you have ever tried to remove popcorn from the ceiling, you know that it's messy work. Here's my method. First, I lightly sprayed sections of the ceiling with a garden sprayer filled with plain water. The garden sprayer saves you a lot of time and pain from hand cramps that occur from repeatedly squeezing a trigger sprayer. You can pump it up and then use the wand to create the mist of your choosing since the tip is adjustable. By the time I had sprayed my section, it was time to scrape. I contstructed this scraping thing to aid me in my efforts. I think there is actually a commercially made thing like this, but I didn't know that at the time. Besides, this was free and I already had everything I needed to make it.  The knife is taped to the bowl at an angle that allows you to scrape without scrubbing the ceiling. The bowl catches about 95% of the stuff you scrape from the ceiling. I had a trash can near by, and I scraped a time or two and then dumped the bowl into the trash can. It really did make things alot easier. You should know that after you remove popcorn from the ceiling, you will probably have to mud the nail/screw divets and possibly the tape joints. You will also have to lightly sand the ceiling with a drywall screen. After that you are ready to prime, which is very important, and paint.

We have 2 other bathrooms in our house, and the half bath downstairs was the next one to go. Get ready for a laugh when you see the before picture.

Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you, that really is shiny marbled wallpaper. There was also a fruit patterned border at the top of the wall. You should also know that the builders of this house were kind enough to put the wallpaper directly on the unprimed, unpainted drywall. They did this in all 3 bathrooms and the kitchen, and I made the mistake of trying to remove in the boys' bathroom. The result was a huge mess that took 5 times longer to deal with than it could/should have. In the remaining two bathrooms, eventhough it's not a great solution, I applied mud to the joints in the wallpaper and sanded them to make them a little more smooth, then I painted right over the wallpaper. It worked in this application because the wallpaper really adheres to the raw drywall and didn't attempt to peel or bubble. If the wallpaper were not adhered to the drywall in this way, I would have removed it as applying paint to wallpaper adhered to a primed or painted wall frequently results in the wallpaper peeling off the wall as the paint is absorbed into the paper and reactivates the adhesive holding the wallpaper to the wall.

Here is the after of the half bath. The color isn't ideal, but I hated that wallpaper and I was out of money in the budget at the time and had this paint color left over from a previous project. I also painted the vanity with left over paint, and added handles to the doors. I also switched out the faucet and added the frame to the mirror. I constructed the frame from all the chair rail we took down in the kitchen.

 

The completion of that project brings me the last bathroom in our house, the master bath.

Here's the before.

 

And here's the after

This is a little project that I had to do in order to not clash.The tile in the master bath is this weird beige-ish color. It has a hint of pink in it that you don't realize is there until you put a paint swatch next to it. It looked awful with every single swatch I tried. Finally, a friend made the comment that if only the baseboard tile and the bullnose on the shower surround could be replaced (because a complete tile job was NOT in the budget) it could make a huge difference and allow for a divide between the existing tile and the new wall color. I didn't have the money to replace the baseboard tile, but I did have the money for spray paint. I got some epoxy spray paint, cleaned the tile to be painted really well with a degreaser and a scotchbrite pad, put paper over the tile I didn't want to paint, and carefully taped it down with painter's tape in a straight line along the grout line. Tada, a divide between the tile color and the wall color.

Well there ya have it, our bathrooms looking a little less crappy than before. :)