#9

I am in the process of painting my bathroom, which is item #9 on my list of 101.

I have lived in this house for 11 or 12 years now, and I have hated the bathroom the entire time. The people who built it were insane. Most of the walls are raw knotty pine tongue-and-groove planks, and two narrow walls are blue-and-green flowered fiberglass panels. Even the ceiling is raw knotty pine. The edges of the inside wall on the shower are unfinished, with a two-by-four attached to the visible ends of the tongue-and-groove, both of which still showed the lumberyard stamp. We did change the floor, which was RUG, and put in a cheap roll of flooring, but the floor wasn't prepped correctly and the flooring wasn't cut correctly, so it's broken in places and doesn't quite meet up to some walls, or around the toilet. The bathroom door was put on upside-down, and it was painted slate blue (to match the fiberglass). All in all, it's a horrible, horrible room. And very tiny. And dark. And no windows.

The base cabinet of the sink was homemade and also raw wood, but a few years ago I fixed that...I painted it a black rose to match a wall cabinet I purchased, and added brushed nickel door handles. I also changed out the shelving, which was (you guessed it), plain raw boards on track bracketing. (Kept the track bracketing, but got prettier, finished, matching boards)

I also bought a gorgeous mirror, and some coordinating bronze towel racks.

But the walls. The walls were soooooo ugly. They needed serious prep work before I could paint them. The knots needed to be sealed (and there were hundreds of knots), much of the wood needed filling for gouges and cracks and holes. The fiberglass paneling needed to be treated so it would take paint. It would be a huge pain-in-the-ass project.

Well, I've started. My first step was to paint that godawful blue door. Used the black rose paint. Love it.

Kira came in and said, "You painted the door. Why did you paint it?"
me: "Because I *hated* the color it was."
Kira: "What color was it?"
me (mouth open, speechless)

Yes. She has lived her entire life in this house, some 3400+ days, has been in that bathroom at least once every one of those days, and did not remember what color the door was.

anyway. I have now sealed all the knots on the walls (not the ceiling...I couldn't take on the ceiling), primed the fiberglass walls, filled & sanded holes etc with wood putty, primed *those* walls (except in the shower stall...I've sealed the knots, but still need to fill and prime). I need to put a second coat of primer on two walls, finish around the shower, and put several coats of color on.

I broke down today and painted the first coat of color on the wall behind the sink. On the fiberglass walls I'm using an antique green. The wood walls are going to be a silver/grey called vellum.

I have worked hours and hours so far on this, and I have a bunch of hours left to go. But this will be the longest I will ever have to work on this room, because the walls will be easy to repaint now that they're all prepped.

Except the ceiling. Dammit. mk