Renovation #526 - Bathroom

When we first moved into the house we live in now we had to do tons of remodeling.  I've talked before about how I sat down and made out a list of all the things we wanted to do with the house, including our big wishes for it like adding a swimming pool.  It took years to complete that list and when it was done we needed to start back over again fixing and repairing rooms.  One of the first things we did was paint and wallpaper.  As the years passed the wallpaper came down until the only room left with it was the girls' bathroom.

My father-in-law had papered this room and he was such a perfectionist that the paper and the room were still in great condition and I had no plans to change it, despite my friend telling me wallpaper was passe.  I had three colors to use for decorating and while I changed up the colors over the years everything else remained the same.

Recently while passing through the hallway after one of the girls had just showered, I noticed that the wall above the shower where it meets the ceiling was stained.  I assumed that it was wet and I yelled at whichever girl had just been in there, "How do you guys get water all the way up there??"  One of the oddities about the bathroom, the home being built in the 60's, is that the only window in the room is inside the shower.  The wetness was above the shower and I ranted and raved about spraying water on the ceiling.  Then I promptly forgot it.

About a month ago I started smelling a foul odor coming from the bathroom.  I was the only one who smelled this, but it began driving me crazy.  I laundered towels daily and changed the trash.  I put in a room deodorizer and scrubbed the sink.  Every time I passed by the doorway I smelled the odor.  One day I was telling this to my mother and the first thing she said was, "You have mold somewhere."  And as soon as the words left her mouth I knew that it was the stain that I had seen previously.  It wasn't water, it was mold and mildew.  The time had come for the wallpaper to come down.

My husband and I stood outside the bathroom that night and looked at the stains above the window.  He was not interested in remodeling the bathroom, but I assured him I would take care of everything because I couldn't live with mold spores raging in the house.  I could feel them attacking my immune system as we stood there.  He, being over six feet, climbed into the bathtub and worked until he got a corner of the wallpaper undone.  He peeled it back and sure enough on the back of the wallpaper was mold.  It hadn't yet gone into the walls so we were fortunate, but before my husband could finish peeling it off, I was on a ladder peeling off the paper on the other side of the room.

It took me two days to get all of the paper off.  I'm an expert at removing wallpaper having removed all of it from my house and a friend's house.  I spent another two days priming the walls with a special mold deterrent primer and by then I had remodeled the room inside my head.  I took Madison with me to pick out the shower curtain so that we could use that as our focal point.  I told her I wanted something different, something bold and colorful.

The thing about my kids is that for the most part they hate change; Madison the most.  She is sixteen and her bedroom is still exactly like it was when she was five.  Both of them said they liked the colors that the bathroom use to be.  I said tough.  We went shopping.  What I liked, Madison didn't.  What she liked, wasn't what I had in mind.  I gave in, although not quietly.  I liked the curtain she picked out because it had great colors, but the main part of the curtain was white.

Along side of the curtain on one side was a line of the blue that was inside the bird.  I thought we could paint the walls that color and was all for the curtain, but Madison didn't want to paint the walls that color.  Even though that color is her favorite.

So we argued some and then I remembered that I was letting her do the decorating and so I bought the shower curtain.  A saleslady suggested we do a tan color for the walls and so I felt better about that as then it would be neutral and I could change things up down the road if I wanted.  We took the curtain home and debated for a few days on color.  Then we were at the check-out line in Target and spotted a gift card with all of the colors of our shower curtain.  The backdrop of the card was a tan and a yellow and so we bought the card to match the paint.  (My nephew ended up with the card since his birthday was next)  I couldn't wait to get it on the walls.

When I did it turned out to be a close yellow color to what I have on my living room walls.  I was, to say the least, not happy.  I don't even like yellow and yet more than half my house is that color.  I call it gold just to avoid the word.  But I had already purchased a gallon of the stuff and edged the walls so I continued for two days painting the bathroom.  Madison assured me it would work and she was right.  When we put the curtain up against the walls it looked real nice.

Whew!  But then we hit another snag on choosing the colors of the towels and rugs.  I wanted one color.  Madison wanted another.  We spent quite a bit of time in Walmart pulling out the curtain, placing various colored rugs on the floor, and draping colored towels over the cart to see what looked best.  When Madison put all of her hers together I had to agree it might just work.  And since I had said she could do this....

The neat thing was that she remembered that we had this little hummingbird stain glass in the same colors (it is above the shower in the above photo).  It came from my in-laws old house.  My mother-in-law had forgotten it, Madison had saved it, and since my mother-in-law didn't want it back it became ours.  It fit right in.  As did this wall hanging that Madison made in math class in middle school.

The next argument came when I said I wanted to replace the lights and the mirror.  Back in the day, before kids, we had hung a small mirror, a matching shelf, and lights on either side of the mirror.  The lights had rusted and the mirror was too small for such beauty as ours.  The girls disagreed.  They liked the mirror and the shelf and the lights.  They lost.

The only thing left is to hang a small towel ring to the right of the mirror, which is the only place for it to hang.  We are fighting about that too.  I will win that one.  I have already purchased the ring and just need a handy man to hang it.  And then the remodeling project will be complete and we will move to the pool deck and backyard.  Whew!