Primary Bathroom Painting

I took a week of PTO last week and returned to work very unrested and tired because I spent four days (Thursday through Sunday) painting the primary bathroom. This time included the prep work, the actual painting, and the clean up.

I think I have finally recovered from my tiredness.

I don't want to paint for the foreseeable future. (I say that, but I also keep thinking, well, the primary bathroom was probably the hardest room to paint, so the rest shouldn't be that bad???)

Result

You should know me by now that I didn't take a before picture. This picture from March 2024 is the best I can do. I took this picture after I framed and hung this magnificent poster from cherrypugpie. This poster is one of my favorites.

The walls were painted the same color as the other bathroom (and the entire house). A glorious beige that sometimes looks pink.

But no longer!

Now we have glorious off white!

Process

I started working on Thursday. I couldn't start earlier because:

1. I was in the middle of a sewing project, which I might post about later.
2. I was waiting for my partner to leave on a trip so I could work without inconveniencing him, since we'd have to use the hallway bathroom to brush teeth and shower. (I did not send him away; this trip was already planned, and I planned to paint knowing he would be gone.)

Thursday

The first day was just taking everything out of the bathroom, removing as many fixtures as possible, and patching holes. I sanded most of the patched holes too, but I missed a few, and had to do a second layer on a couple, so I didn't sand those yet.

I couldn't remove the towel bars. One of them I had used an adhesive strip behind it for extra support, so I knew ahead of time that I would have to paint around it. But the other, the little metal caps covering the screws would not come off; I either couldn't get it to unscrew, or it just kept spinning. Well, not a big deal I guess. There are far worse crimes that have been committed in this house before me.

Friday

The second day was sanding the remaining patches and taping. This time I remembered to tape the ceiling vents. There's also recessed lights, so I had to tape those too. It was fairly inconvenient to get to the recessed lights above the sink because I had to do an awkward squat/crouch on the counter while also looking up.

I thought maybe I would do one coat of paint that night.

I did not.

Saturday

The third day was painting. With the vapor filters on my respirator, it was much less painful. Which was great because I needed the extra life force to go up and down the ladder, move the ladder, go up and down again, move it again, etc. I feel like it was significantly more work than the hallway bathroom because it was not just a rectangle. I noticed the next day I had 5-6 bruises on my legs from bumping into things while working.

I did run out of paint, which was expected since I started with a half-ish gallon and this bathroom had around 100 sqft more to cover than the other. But I was able to finish the first coat before I had to make a trip to Home Depot. Perfect timing.

I ordered the paint online, took a dinner break, went to pickup my order, and did the second coat. (And I now have another half-ish gallon of paint leftover lol. I will use it for the kitchen if I ever paint the kitchen.)

I cleaned up what I had to — removing tape, rinsing paint brush and rollers, setting up the fan to air it out. I was too lazy to lay down the tarp and move it around because I had to move the ladder so much, so I ended up with little paint splatters on the floor and counter. Most of them aren't really noticeable unless you're really looking. But I tried to scrape as many as I could. Using a chisel because it seemed effective.

And then I missed and cut the side of my index finger with the chisel. It is healed now, but I couldn't bend my finger for three days.

Sunday

The last day was more cleaning, wiping down everything, vacuuming, mopping, reattaching the fixtures, and putting everything back to where it was before.

Everything was back in order before my partner returned home. We could mostly use the primary bathroom again, but I didn't want us to use the shower for 48-72 hours so the paint could cure a bit. So we showered in the other bathroom for two more days. (At least he only had to suffer two days instead of four!) It wasn't terrible, but the other bathroom has no ventilation. Even with the window open and a fan running, the bathroom is 💦 m o i s t 💦 after using the shower.

Summary

Finally, I will leave you with some in-progress before and after pictures from various angles. I showed these pictures to my dad and he said he couldn't tell the difference... but hopefully you can! (To be fair, I didn't have them side-by-side like this; it was just an album on my phone with the pictures in chronological order.)