Unexpected Master Bathroom Remodel

Over the weekend we discovered a huge problem under our house. A few months ago the tiles in our shower became loose. Loose enough that we could touch them and pull them up without much effort. We didn’t think too much of it, but apparently we should have. While under the house we found extensive mold damage under the master bathroom. We’re going to have to gut the entire room, as well as get a professional to deal with all of the rot and mold under the house. We’re not sure what the work under the house will entail, but we will be doing all of the work from demolition to tile to drywall ourselves. Here is what we are dealing with

Hall Bathroom Paint

The hall bathroom has really come along in the past month or so. We painted the walls, trim, doors, and inside of the closet. Now we just need to do a few touch ups and replace the doors, vanity doors and drawers, and closet shelves to call this room completely done.

Wall behind the mirror

 

 

 

 

Closet that is now white instead of yellow

View from the doorway

 

Finished Kitchen

I can’t believe I’ve held off on blogging about something this exciting for so long. A few weekends ago we FINISHED our kitchen! When I left off, we still had to patch and paint the ceiling. The hardest part about this was the actual patching. We started off with a popcorn ceiling patch, but the ‘popcorn’ in the patch was way too large and looked out of place compared to the rest of the ceiling. Next we tried a paint mix-in. We mixed some ‘sand’ texture into our primer and got to work on the spots. While it’s not perfect, it adds enough texture to really mask the patches unless you are specifically looking for them. Here is the ceiling before with the stains from the old lights and the smooth patches.

We put plastic up to cover all the walls and cabinets. We didn’t have too many problems with paint drips from the actual primer or paint, but using the sand infused primer was a mess.

Sand infused paint patch

We primed the entire ceiling with Zissner Bin Shellac based primer to ensure we got good coverage over the stains. Then we painted with Valspar’s ceiling paint. The paint goes on purple and dries white, which really helped us to ensure we got a good coat over all areas of the ceiling.

The finished product

 

11 Months Later…

One week shy of 11  months after starting the kitchen remodel, we can finally say we have one project left before the room is completely finished. All of the trim in the room is now painted, and all that is left is painting the ceiling.

I had become so accustomed to seeing the primed trim that I actually thought it looked ok and was white. As soon as we painted over it, the difference was amazing. Now the trim pops against the walls instead of sort of blending into it. We painted all of the trim with two coats of Olympic white satin paint. I found if you use a straight edge and are careful, there isn’t even a need to tape.

The Death Of Pinky

Over the past week we finally had the tile in the pink bathroom re-glazed. We need to let it set for a few days before we can put the toilet back in or do any real work in there. We couldn’t be happier with how this turned out. On Saturday the walls were done, and the fumes in the house we terrible. We had to leave all the windows open, fans running, etc for about 8 hours before it started to smell ok. On Monday they did the floor, and that thankfully didn’t smell as bad. On Tuesday they came back and took down all the paper and caulked. I am so glad I paid someone else to do this. What took them three days probably would have taken me at least three months, and I’m not even sure I would have been able to finish it after smelling how strong this stuff was.

The new floor. This is a beige stone fleck pattern. It’s fairly similar to the counter top, although we didn’t realize that when we picked it out using a small 1 in x 1 in sample.

The new walls. I’m going to re-paint the actual walls to give the room some color, and hopefully putting the shower curtain back up will hide the difference in the two shades of white from the shower and wall tile.

The finished lights re-installed. I am so happy with how these turned out, and am planning on doing the same thing to the pendant lights in the other two bathrooms.

Here is a close-up of the light.

The only thing left(besides painting the walls which is fairly easy and straightforward), is to finish sanding down the off-white trim and paint it white. You can see in the above picture with the window how yellow the trim looks next to the white walls. Here is what it looks like around the doors. I’ll need to get rid of the flaking paint, and then also paint the inside of the closet and the shelves in there. The goal is to be done by the end of September at the latest, but hopefully much sooner!

Bathroom Lights, Or Another Encounter With Spray Paint

All of the bathrooms in our house have pendant lights in them. Really old pendant lights that are rusted and/or molded. The pink bathroom has two, and the other two bathrooms have one each. I forgot to take a picture of the lights actually hanging up in the bathroom, but this is what the two from the pink bathroom looked like when I got them down.

Instead of spending the money on new pendant lights, or trying to patch the ceiling holes and put up light fixtures on the walls, I wanted to see what I could do with the lights we already had. I started by wiping everything off with a damp rag and getting as much grime off as I could. Next I took a piece of 150 grit sandpaper and sanded off all the mold and as much of the rust as I could. I just wanted to get any flakes off and get a nice surface for the paint to adhere too.

I primed the lights and with Rust Oleum’s Clean Metal Primer.

I did two thin coats of primer, and then came back with two thin coats of Rust Oleum’s Metallic Satin Nickel spray paint

The end result was exactly what I was looking for.

Total time for the project was about an hour and the total cost was $14(and I still have enough primer left to do the other two lights and enough paint for one light).

Bathroom Vanity

Working on the pink bathroom has been a slow process, but we are finally making some real progress in there. The doors and drawers are completely painted, and the vanity is finished minus some caulk and a little touch up paint. We’re going to let the doors cure for a few more days before we re-attach the hardware and put the entire thing back together.

The almost finished vanity:

I used one coat of the Zinsser Bin Shellac Based Primer followed by two coats of Valspar’s Ultra Premium Kitchen and Bath Enamel.

Here is what the inside shelf that has no been caulked looks like

and here is the difference with caulk:

The caulk just covers up the cracks in between the different wood pieces. I will need to go back and touch up the paint over the caulk since the caulk and paint will age a little differently, but other than that the vanity is done.

Caulk, Curtains, and other small changes

While I’ve been working my days away in the bathroom, Justin has installed shoe molding in most rooms, and started caulking the trim and baseboards throughout the house. It’s really amazing what a difference a little caulk can make in some molding. Once he is finished we will finally be able to start painting the trim and ceilings. It feels like it is taking forever, but we are making progress every day, and that is what is most important.

We also finally hung some curtains in the parlor. We found these curtains at Marshall’s for $10 a panel. They are more sheer than I would want in just about any other room, but in here they work perfectly.

Toxic Fumes

Over the weekend I finished getting the first coat of paint on the vanity doors and drawers.

I need to go back and spot sand everything, and then decide if they need another coat of paint. I am leaning towards putting a second coat on them regardless, but right now they do look pretty good.

While those were drying I got to work on priming the vanity. I was pretty nervous starting this because I had to go back to the shellac primer, and we know what a disaster that was at times on the doors. Before I had painted outside on probably the only two days in history when it wasn’t humid in Columbia in the summer. When I moved inside, the paint dried surprisingly slower, and made working with it so much easier. The only problem about being inside: the fumes. The first day of painting I spent an hour in the bathroom with the vent fan going and a mask on. Unfortunately it was a cheap mask that wasn’t doing anything. After an hour I was dizzy, lightheaded, and had to spend a good 30 minutes outside detoxing. Lesson learned. We got a much better mask that actually makes me look like the bug man, and in 30 minutes last night I finished the vanity without smelling a thing.

In preparation for painting this, we installed a vent fan/light into the bathroom as well.

Now, I have to lightly sand the vanity again and hopefully won’t need to spot prime any of it. When we do the top coat of latex enamel, the fumes shouldn’t be a problem and the paint should be much easier to work with. We still haven’t been given a definite date on the tile refinishing, but hopefully in the next week or two we will get that done.

Shellac Primer

Over the weekend I set out to prime the doors and drawers of our bathroom vanity. I knew I wanted a primer that would stick really well to the wood and old paint, preferably in one coat, and also one that would withstand the temperature fluctuations and moisture of the bathroom. Every search I did for a primer like this led back to Zinsser Bin Shellac Based Primer.

I wasn’t expecting the paint to be so watery, so after I opened it I did a little more google research before I started. The two things that stuck out were the comments that this stuff dries ‘lightning quick’ and ‘sticks to air’. Let’s just say I should have put more stock in those two comments, because I did not do the best job on the first few doors I painted. The primer was drying in the can as I was working with it, and I learned that you basically get on shot at each stroke you put down. If you go back over something, it’s too late. The paint is too dry and it causes the older paint to come up and create lots of bumps. Fortunately I took three separate paint attempts to get everything done and of course as I was doing the third application I really got the hang of it. I did all of this outside with a mask on since the smell is pretty strong. I also bought some cheap chip brushes from Lowe’s so that I could toss the brush each time I was done with it. The only way to clean a brush after putting it in this stuff is to use a mix of ammonia and water, and at $6 for 6 brushes the chip brushes just made a lot more sense.

The drawers were a little easier to work with, but here is what the front looked like after one coat of primer and a little touch up sanding with some 320 grit sand paper.

I didn’t worry quite as much about the inside of the drawers since we’ll put contact paper on the bottoms of them and cover up any problem spots.

Here are two of the doors, two that I painted in the last batch so they look far better than my first attempts.

I would have taken better pictures of the whole process, but I was too busy running around on our deck with the paint can swearing at the paint as it dried so quickly. I need to do some touch up sanding on a few of the doors I painted yesterday, and then they should all be ready for the first coat of paint. Thankfully I’m going to use latex paint for the top coat. Specifically Valspar kitchen and bath paint that is formulated to block mildew and mold. What I’m not looking forward to: using the shellac primer to do the vanity. I’m going to wait on that until they are done fixing our tile, and we’re done installing a vent fan in the bathroom so that none of us have to inhale the fumes from this stuff.