It Started with Toilet Lust

(Or - I Only Wanted to Paint the Bathroom)

Yes, toilet lust - over a year ago, too. It all started because the small bathroom off our bedroom (AKA Gerry's bathroom) needed a new toilet after we put in the new tile shower and floor. I love the new toilet there - it is water efficient, refills quickly, and has the higher seat which makes so much sense.

It was all exacerbated by my hatred of this ceramic floor tile in the main bathroom:

I hate that tile. Very golden harvest 70s tile that someone installed poorly because the grout lines actually have a jog in them and things don't line up.

The wall tile, which was probably added in the 80s or maybe even the 90s isn't too bad:
Except! It's in a completely different color family from the floor tile, and from the swirly marble tub surround. But I figured I could live with that, and could just put something compatible on the floor. And then we replaced the toilet. And the tank is in a totally different place, and guess what?! The people who put this tile in didn't put it behind the toilet. There's a big ugly spot where the old, larger, lower tank used to be. And though we've looked for many months now (MANY months) we haven't found anything to fill in the hole.

This past January, I'd had enough of the ugly hole in the wall tile behind the toilet, and made a decision of what to do. So we emptied the cupboards and took them off the wall and began stripping the nearly-as-ugly wallpaper. Oh! And we had a leak around the shower head repaired too! It was finally time to DO SOMETHING.

Here's a smidgeon of what's left of the ugly wallpaper. Too bad I've been trying to remove it, so some of the iridescent fake shine is worn down a bit:
Notice the trying to remove it part? Yeah...since January. I'm sick of it. I've sprayed and scraped and scored and sanded. This one section is not budging.

As of yesterday I've had enough. I thought I could paint the ceiling and the upper walls. I've had my colors chosen for months. And don't you know that removing the icky fake baseboard revealed a problem with the vanity which can't be replaced because of the way the vanity top was cut into the door trim and I had to make a new decision about the vanity despite not being able to replace the floor right now.

I'll do the vanity the new way we figured after two trips to Home Depot yesterday. I have the ceiling painted. It's been one mushroom after the other. A simple little job like painting the bathroom - it may take several more months!