This weekend was a good time to relax and catch up on my private life. School is almost done for the year, so I had a small lull in my marking. Saturday was rainy and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to work on a small reno project I could do without Leon’s assistance. The basement bathroom is one of the few places in the house with regular height ceilings and no fixtures to remove. It’s also really ugly, although quite newly built (2009). I hate the floor tile, which is caramel and brown sugar; the fixtures are minimalist (read cheap) and poorly spaced so they don’t cover the plumbing and drainage pipes very well; the lighting consists of 4 bulbs on a chrome strip, which do nothing to enhance anyone’s appearance, let alone the appearance of the bathroom! The walls are a light shade of yellow – cheery to some, institutional to others. The best part is the liberal use of silicone caulking, around the shower stall, on the baseboards at the wall joint and the floor (they never heard of quarter round?) and on the door frames. Yes, this bathroom is certainly waterproof! It’s also paint proof!
I therefore spent a good part of Saturday scraping away the caulking, which doesn’t come off in long strips, by the way. I washed the walls with TSP and tried to settle on a colour that would minimize the tile colour and enhance the poor lighting. Yes, the room would benefit from a full make-over, which would include white cabinets from our ensuite, walls covered in white bead-board with a soothing spa blue on the top third of the wall. I’ve found light fixtures I love and I’d change out the mirror for a nice framed one. The reality is that the cabinets are not available until we renovate our ensuite and this is meant to be a quick update to improve the appearance and usability of the bathroom for when Leon’s youngest son comes to live with us in September. Not that young adults care about these things.
At any rate, I visited my local Home Depot armed with 4 paint chips, ready to purchase just the right tone. I was indecisive, so I went to the tile department to find a similar tile, just in case that would inspire me further. I had found a gorgeous antique green and a lovely blue that would fulfill my yearning for a coastal look. Maybe the ugly tile can pretend it’s sand and the walls can compliment it? I settled on a colour that matches the tile perfectly! Then I can add some accessories to complete the coastal look.
The nice young man at the store sold me some super duper primer, guaranteed to stick to glass, even. I prepped the walls with a further rinse and a bit of nail polish remover for the silicone bits. So far so good. And the tunes from my tablet were lifting my mood. I love to paint! It relaxes me. The primer was going to take a few hours to dry and by now it was almost diner time. So I put everything away for another day. But I could help but check the colour of the paint on a small patch of wall. Oh dear! Does the term baby poo adequately describe the new wall colour?
Leon suggested I just go ahead and paint and we can always repaint. I am not sure. I might go spend more money on a few sample pots before I proceed. I’ll let you know when I get another day off.
Turning my world upside down! 
Finding just the right color is indeed a challenge – bonne chance!
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It’s hard to live with “baby poo.” A colleague of mine design a billboard ad with a shade of green, and, you guessed it, when the billboard went up the green looked like “baby poo.” He had to pass the billboard every day on the way to work, and said it was torture. lol Maybe they can add a little more color to the current can, so you don’t have to buy another one?
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Thanks for the suggestion. I have been adding colour to many of my paint choices lately. However, I am not sure what can be done with a colour as deep and rich as this one. I’ll have to experiment.
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