Last weekend (the 19th and 20th) we painted the bathroom. This is one of the last steps in our bathroom re-model, and one we had been very much looking forward to. I think one thing we have learned is that if we ever rent out a place, we will not let the renters paint, since they frequently do a very sloppy job. Though we are trying very hard, I sometimes wonder if we will be able to even get the house looking as good as it did the day Ellen and Dave left for Arizona. Bit by bit though, we are undoing and covering up the damage that previous renters had done, including, yes, writing on the wall.
On Friday night I did one final sanding of the drywall mud and washed the walls. I also took off the light switch covers (something the renters who had painted before us did not do).
Saturday morning we put a coat of Killz primer on it. We did the ceiling first, and then the walls. I did the trimming and Clare did the rolling. The ceiling is textured, so we used a nappy roller for the ceiling. We used the same roller for the walls with the primer, but then switched to different roller for the paint. We also tried out a little trick that our friend Tim told us. Instead of cleaning your brushes and rollers between coats, you can wrap them in saran wrap and put them in the refrigerator. We tried this with the nappy roller, since we were going to be using white paint on the ceiling, and the primer was also white. It worked pretty well. We didn’t use this method overnight though.
The primer coat took us a good 3 or so to complete. After that was done, we had some lunch, and took a little break. The primer claimed that it only needed an hour to dry, and it did dry very quickly. We probably gave it a good 2 hours or so. We used some leftover Killz ceiling white for the ceiling. I continued trimming with a 2″ brush for the ceiling, and Clare continued rolling. Once we were done with the ceiling, I switched to a 1 1/2″ angle brush for trimming, my father’s favorite. One definitely can get a lot more accurate with a slightly smaller brush. This coat went a bit quicker, maybe 2 1/2″ hours, plus some time to rinse out the brushes (in the newly re-installed laundry tub – more on that in an upcoming post).
We chose “ginger” for the walls, which is a beige-ish color — the same color we used in the livingroom and our bedroom. We liked it so much that we decided to use it in the bathroom too. We discussed some different colors, but we wanted to keep it fairly light, since the bathroom doesn’t get much sunlight. We also decided to go with a semi-gloss finish, as we had in the upstairs bathroom, since it is a bit more water-resistant than a satin or a flat, and is easier to clean.
Sunday morning we slept in a bit and had a leisurely breakfast, so I started trimming around 9:45 while Clare talked to her parents. I think she started rolling around 10:30, but it didn’t take long for her to catch up. After surveying the first coat, we decided not to put a second coat on the ceiling, but just to touch up a few places with a brush, after we had finished painting the walls. There were a few spots on the ceiling that were a bit thin, and also a few places where we had gotten some wall paint on the ceiling. That’s why we did it afterwards. We used drop cloths the whole time, and always had a wet rag handy in case we got some paint on the wood, tile or some other place we didn’t want paint, but there is nothing one can do about getting wall paint on the ceiling, except to cover it up later. (Again, former renters apparently did not have the forethought to wipe paint off trim with a wet rag, nor do many other people, as we have recently learned).
It really is amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do to a room. There are still several more finishing touches to be done, but it is really coming together. Just in time for mowing season.
