Hallway Bathroom - Phase 1

Yay! I'm so excited to show you the first room to be 'finished' in our house!! - Well, by finished I mean that we still have a couple of more things that we would like to do to it, but let's just say that Phase 1 is complete!!!

Here is the before picture which I took before we moved in:

And here is the after pic! - Phase 1 Complete:

Here is what we have done so far:

Something I did not understand about this space was that the bathroom was painted an aqua color with combat aircraft.... hmmm... therefore the first step to the process was: the wall paper had to go.

Next we had to paint. In one of my previous posts, I listed all of our "would love" colors. For this bathroom, the "would love" color was the Valspar Mountain Smoke. After we got a sample, this is what it looked like:

Notice the mustard color frame =_=

So not the color I had in my mind. It looked brown and really dark. Back to the drawing board.

This time we headed back to Lowe's and I promised myself I didn't want to leave without the color I wanted. The result:

Selecting paint color requires a lot of patience and I've learned it's something I'm not very patient about. I see people testing all kinds of colors, making sure it looks right during the day, at night, with the sun shining... and I'm pretty sure that's how it should be. I just can't wait to get it done. Luckily the only 3 spaces we've painted so far have turned out to our liking [knock on wood].

Something else we realized after the sample dried was that the aqua was showing through. So I used some primer we had in our garage and got to work. 

Looks so different already

What do you think of my first paint job? Seriously first time ever, and I liked it! (is that bad?). I see rainbow walls in our future. Actually, I feel brave enough to try the stripped wall so many people in blogville are trying, but maybe not brave enough to stencil..... yet......

After the primer was dry, some cleaning was in order. For this job I used my Method's Le Scrub bathroom cleaner I mentioned in my spring cleaning post and let me tell you I was amazed

I had been washing all our paint supplies in the bathroom tub (actually not sure if I should have done that or not.. oops) and the tub was covered in paint and dust, it looked really bad. So I grabbed a sponge and my new scrub mon ami and got to work (yes, he's french and smells really good...). It did take some elbow greae to clean it, but the results were instant! and once I was finished I even had where to put the sponge I used :)

 

Then, the moment of truth..... apply actual color to the wall. This part actually scared me a little because the primer was going to be covered, while the color was going to be there for everyone to see! But after a few strokes of my roller I felt comfortable and rolled with it... no pun intended :)

We also changed the shower rod to one of those that curves out so we can have more room in the shower! - Always wanted one of those......... ahem

Here is the before and after again:

And what's the plan for Phase 2 you ask? I would love something like this:

and maybe something like this:

and this:

You get the idea... what do you think? Let me know if you have any suggestions or tell me about your bathroom renovations.

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