A Little Remodeling...Finally!

The year 2002 started out with me tearing my home apart...sort of. I've hated the guest bathroom ever since I moved in and decided it was time I did something about it. Ditto for the wallpaper in my downstairs hallway. I didn't think about taking pictures until after I had already started the work, but take a look at the transformation...and click on any picture to view a 4x blow-up of it...

This is the old countertop. I don't know what the color is called, but I called it "vomit". It has obviously been removed, so you unfortunately can't see how bad it looked with the wallpaper, but...

This is the old wallpaper in the bathroom. To me it looks like Florida on acid in the 70's. I had already started priming it by the time I thought to take this picture. Yes, that's right; I decided to just paint over it since it was adhered so well.

It was difficult to come up with anything that matched the old blue/aqua-ish tile. I didn't want to replace that too, so I decided to go with fairly neutral colors: white & gray. The background of this area is a sample of the counter top.

Here it is installed. The new counter is a gray & white laminate top with a drop-in sink. It was a close fit with the sink! I ordered it from Home Depot and told them the sink I was getting (standard 17"x20") and it arrived with the hole cut out such that there is barely 1/8" overlap in the front & back!

And here is the new bathroom. The walls are gray, though you can't really tell in the picture. I probably should have gone a shade or two darker. The vanity, doorframes and doors are white. It may not be a style statement, but it's better than the old "vomit in Florida" decor.

Now on to the downstairs hallway's wallpaper...

Since I didn't take a "before" picture of the hallway wallpaper, here's a picture from when I first moved in in '96.

Removal proved to be more difficult than expected, even though there were several places where it was peeling off on its own! Here's a section after the paper had been removed...though much paste is still on the walls.

It was old (non-pre-pasted) paper, with a deep texture, so the paste was thick, and when it came off, the paper let go, but the paste stuck to the walls, creating a nice mess to have to remove separately.

It took a long, long time to get this all completed. I started in February, before my shoulder surgery. Afterwards, I found I wasn't able to do the work, so I kept waiting until my condition improved...and waited...and waited...and gave up and hired someone, deciding to remove the upstairs wallpaper and repaint it all at the same time.

What a mess that was! The hired person made an absolute mess of my place while doing the work, didn't do things in the correct order, causing more work to get it right, and in the end, quite honestly I could have done a better painting job myself! And after they were gone, I had to touch-up a couple places that looked like they had missed the 2nd coat, and when I opened the blue paint, I found they had watered it down to get it to cover, rather than buying another gallon! It had the consistency of water. No wonder things don't look right up close! I may even end up re-painting the entire downstairs myself with another coat of non-watered-down paint. Yeesh.

But I do like the way it turned out. More color. Brighter. Cleaner looking. A terrific improvement, don't you think? I don't know how accurate the colors are -- every monitor is different, but the downstairs is sort of a periwinkle blue, the stairwell is a very pale yellow, and the upstairs is a brownish-beige.

From Dining Room	From Front Door	From Living Room
Looking Up the Stairs	From the Landing	The Upstairs Hall

Next on the agenda (for 2003), new carpeting upstairs and some changes to the master bath.