Home Improvement Project Gone Bad

“Honey, I’m going to paint the bathroom.” This is probably the easiest way to strike fear in the heart of your spouse. Is any home improvement project that simple? Case in point is our yet unfinished bathroom. Think 70’s home with green floral wallpaper and a carpeted bathroom (who carpets the master bath?).

So I begin removing wallpaper only to find that it was applied directly to the unpainted plaster. That goes well. Ok, just kidding. Off come nice chunks of plaster with the strips of paper, but I plug away at it. As much as I was looking forward to plastering the walls, I decided to take a long break to dislocate a knee. You see, my body figured home improvement isn’t hard enough without being in a leg brace and not being able to bend or squat. No big deal, we just have a partially stripped bathroom for, well, a long time.

In the meantime, the bathroom decides it’s getting ignored and springs a leak at the base of the toilet. Replacing a wax ring, that one my husband gets to do. Of course the carpet has to be taken out because it’s ruined (see toilet leak above). Now the painting job has become a painting, plastering, tiling job. This is not what I signed up for. The tile is in though, looks pretty darn good.

Now it’s time to show my son how to paint. So he’s pretty happily painting away and comes in and says “mom, is it supposed to peel off the wall?” The new plaster is peeling away as we paint. So I have to wait and replaster, then wait for everything to dry. What’s a little more time, right?

Well a little more time gives something else a little more time to break. I mentioned the new tile floor, right? I didn’t mention the toilet going back in after the tile. Now the toilet’s 30 year old flex line has teeny tiny leaks all over. So the toilet is unusable; the wall is waiting for paint; I have one loose floor tile; the cat scratched the cabinets so they need refinishing, which means I should replace the fixtures of course; the old toilet paper holder is cracked, so I have to replace that now that the wall is plastered.

Next time you hear “honey I’m going to paint”, run away screaming.