The Transformation Begins

I had the day off work today, so I started working on getting my bathrooms painted.  First, a couple of before pictures.  Kindly ignore the mess.  I'm still moving in.

Yeah, this is just a blank wall.  It'll probably end up with a cabinet or at least a towel rack on it. 

I'm thinking about removing this gigantic mirror and replacing it with a mirrored cabinet and a smaller cabinet over the toilet. In fact, I want to take it down before I paint.  I'm just afraid I'll break it if I try to do it by myself.  I need to figure out how to get that light fixture down, too. 

This is the half bath.  I have no idea why the previous owner chose this color, but there it is. 

I ran by True Value after work yesterday to buy my paint, but the paint guy had a line backed up to the door.  He seemed pretty flustered and rushed, so I decided to wait until today.

In the meantime, I started removing the wall paper border in the main bathroom.

Oh, it's lovely wallpaper.  It just doesn't fit with the seaside theme I'm going with.

I got this far before I realized I'd forgotten a vitally important fact. 

That fact being, I am short. Standing on a folding chair just wasn't going to cut it.  So when I went into town to buy my paint, I stopped by Wal-Mart and got a step ladder.  That made things a whole lot easier.

Then on to True Value to get my paint.  When the guy mixed the main color (the lighter blue in the middle), he pulled out the sample to put onto the label.  He said, "Ooo, I like that!"

Then he mixed my accent color (the darker blue at the top).  He pulled out the sample and said, "I like that even better." 

After that, I came back home and pulled the wallpaper off.  I had no idea how hard it is to remove old wallpaper.  I'm starting to understand why people just slap the new over the old.

It took most of the day, and several NCIS breaks, but I persevered and got it done.  

Now I have nice clean walls, but am too tired to paint.  You can see in the upper right corner that there was some blue paint under the white. 

I wondered if I needed to fill those in with drywall compound or something to make it smooth, but since I'm putting up another border, I won't need to.  On the other hand, if I decide to skip the border and put up molding, I'll need to smooth that out.  Hmmm, decisions, decisions...

Some good news... Cody's car broke down Wednesday night.  He thought it was the transmission.  No, that's not the good news.  The good news is, it wasn't the transmission.  It was the shifting cable. 

A whole lot cheaper fix than repairing or replacing an entire transmission.