While there's a huge list of projects we're excited to tackle at our new house, it was clear to me what needed to go near the top of our priority project list. 

With its floral decor from ceiling to floor, the one project I couldn't wait to start was our downstairs bathroom. In fact, we had owned the house less than a day before our sleeves were rolled rolled up and we were ripping off that wallpaper.

This bathroom, accessed through the "office" space, is the one bathroom on the first floor. While it's a full bathroom complete with a very small stand up shower, primarily it will serve as a powder room for our home. 

The floral wallpaper, corresponding floral border around the ceiling and window, matching floral valance, and other tired decorative accents were not something I wanted to live with while we focused our attention in other places in the house. And while we have already started on some major work in our living room, given the fact this bathroom will be a highly trafficked room, and it happens to also be the first room we see when we enter the home through the side porch, we felt it necessary to put it on the "quick fix" list. 

Thanks to my mom's eagerness to launch into this project at 4:30am on day one, she and I had the wallpaper down that first weekend and we could already see progress towards refreshing the space. (More details on stripping the wallpaper are detailed in this post.)

At some point far into the future, we have plans to fully renovate this bathroom (possibly even changing the footprint) so we can address things like the toilet that flushes and sounds like a jet engine, or the tired, cracked tile...

...but in the meantime we're looking to refresh the tiny room without spending a lot of time or money.

So we started by taking out as many of these decorative elements as possible. In addition to the wallpaper, we started by pulling out the bent and rickety metal mini-blinds, brass towel bars, and the baseboard radiator covers for a thorough scrubbing before they'd get a fresh coat of paint. They looked like they had been growing fur in an attempt to claim the crown of the house's fluffiest pet.

We took out the toilet tank so we could address where the wall behind it had been damaged by a leak, and we also took down this sexy seashell flush mount fixture. I have plans for this little guy.

On the plus side, this room still has an old door (possibly relocated from another part of the house) along with an old rim lock that's just begging to be restored. 

Alex carefully removed the hardware, exposing decades worth of dirt and grime. Gross. 

I then got started on filling the dozens of nail and screw holes in and around the room, especially in the window's molding. This seems to be a trend in this house as there are hundreds of unfilled nail holes that we'll eventually address.

As we previously shared, the wallpaper didn't come down without a fight, and left us with badly damaged drywall that meant we needed to rehab the walls and ceiling before we could get started painting. Over several weekends, Alex worked his skim coating magic and gave us a surface suitable for painting. 

It's a tedious and time consuming process, but it was a necessary evil in this case. We'll surely be using a steamer on future wallpaper removal efforts.

It took three skim coats to get the walls in shape, with a good sanding between each coat. 

Before the final coat, Alex asked me do a once over of the walls and ceiling, circling any imperfections in pencil. This identifies small areas that need a final really thin coat of joint compound and a final sanding before we're ready to open up the can of primer and dust off our rollers and brushes.

After the skim coating was complete, Alex ran a bead of caulk around the corners of the room, along the tile, and anywhere that there are cracks and imperfections. This is a bit of a shortcut he's started using to created crack free corners. It's a little bit of a cheat, but it works really well with small gaps.

The caulk definitely creates a crisp line and will make the paint look so much better.

While he worked on prepping for paint, I started on the design direction for the space. I decided my jumping off point in the room would be the shower curtain. It's been over a decade since I've had a bathroom with a shower curtain, and I was really excited to start the selection process. I combed discount stores like HomeGoods, TJMaxx, Marshalls, and Target, and ultimately landed on a pale blue, gray, and white paisley option from HomeGoods for $15 that would work with the existing white floor tile, beige wall and shower tile, and a calm subtle nautical scheme I was going for.

After purchasing the curtain, I selected the paint color for the walls and ceiling. I learned long ago that it's always easier to select a paint color to match fabric/decor rather than finding fabric/decor to match a paint color. I ultimately decided on Benjamin Moore's Silver Crest, my go-to ceiling paint hue that we already had on hand, along with Benjamin Moore's Wales Gray just a couple shades down on the same paint strip for the walls.

The ceiling and wall painting went off without a hitch. Alex cut in while I rolled, and did my best to keep paint out of my hair and off the "good side" of my baseball hat. You can see just how tight this room is on the vanity side.

After a coat of primer and two coats of paint on both the ceiling and walls, we could already start to see the room looking more like our style. Lulu agreed.

Then it came time for a big decision. What color did we want to paint the trim? Normally I'm not paralyzed by paint selection, but this is the start to not only the trim color but also the brand and sheen of paint we'll use throughout the entire house. While Benjamin Moore is our favorite brand of paint, we've also had good luck with Sherwin Williams paint as well (although my biggest complaint is that I don't think the color on the chip looks like the wall color after it goes up). Putting our reservations aside, we decided to go the SW route because it's substantially less expensive and they offer more generous discounts and sales. So after much hemming and hawing and bouncing ideas off of friends, we bit the bullet and bought a gallon of Sherwin Williams "Alabaster" in semi gloss.

It was evening when I started painting the trim, and it was difficult to get a true sense of the paint color in the artificial light. I soldiered on, despite feeling a bit uncertain of my decision. The next morning I rushed downstairs like a kid on Christmas morning, excited to see the room with its fresh, crisp white trim. Instead my excitement turned to disgust. Not only is the color a bit too creamy/off white, but the sheen looks terrible. Instead of a smooth, glossy finish, what we have is a chalky consistency. WTF?? Alex confirmed that it wasn't me just being totally Type A, and agreed with my assessment. 

I ran through a quick list of how I could have gone wrong. I double checked the paint can. Nope, I hadn't purchased eggshell paint by mistake. I had thoroughly stirred/shaken the paint before I started. We had primed the existing trim. But it looks like total crap. I'm so frustrated that not only did we waste $40+ dollars on a gallon of paint that we're not going to use, but I spent considerable time applying two coats of paint to all of the trim in the bathroom. I raged about it for a good two days, and then decided to circle back to this later. I don't want to hold up this project being angry and having paralysis in choosing a new color. So instead we'll save the trim repainting for another day, and in the meantime will get to the fun stuff. Accessorizing.

Here's an in-progress look at where we'll leave off for today.

It obviously needs many things, but the bathroom walls and ceiling are painted. The shower curtain is hung. The trim is improved but still needs attention. Yet the room is devoid of accessories, a mirror, lighting, and some caulk near the top of the baseboard radiator. But even in a space that's only about halfway through a quick makeover, I can't help but be thrilled that we moved this room to the top of the priority list.  

Did you tackle any quick, albeit temporary fix projects when you moved into your house? It pained Alex to put time and effort into a room he would rather "blow up," but I knew we'd probably be working on this for years if he had his way. After our efforts were underway and he was no longer annoyed at skim coating, I'm happy to report that he agrees this quick fix is a good idea.