I pledge allegiance to our bathroom

The room in our house that has had the most amount of time invested in it for the least result is for sure our guest bathroom. First I was determined to make it purplish blue. The first time, that was a monster fail. Mark and I scraped the entire room and I took a second stab at it with oil based primer. That time the paint stuck -but almost two years later, I was so over the purple.

There's something about walking by a room when the door is opened and all of a sudden, BAM! IT'S PURPLE!

We are not in a position to gut the bathroom and redo it entirely, so over this 4th of July weekend, I decided to see what I could do with the shell that we had -a blue tiled shower/tub and an old, severely over-painted vanity.

I first started with the walls and some Killz. It took 2 coats of heavy duty stain blocking primer to block out the purple.

In between coats, I had the brilliant idea of starting to peel off the white paint that I had sloppily applied to the vanity when we first bought the house.

The previous owners must have switched from pulls to knobs, because on each drawer or cabinet, there were 3 holes. The extra holes had been hidden by small white ceramic rings, but I decided just the knobs looked much better and filled the holes with putty.

Cut to 2am on Saturday morning. I was tired and high on paint fumes.

I continued the project on Saturday, with 2 coats of Glidden's Arctic Blue. The color tied perfectly with the tile in the shower and was much more subtle and serene than its purple predecessor, Behr's Endure.

I then redirected my attention to the vanity. I had hand-scraped all that I could. It was time to bust out the hand sander. I sanded the entire thing through who knows how many coats. I didn't ever get down to the wood, but since I knew I was just repainting it, that wasn't necessary. It just had to be smooth.

I applied 2 coats of Killz and then 2 coats of Behr Pure White (Satin Kitchen and Bath). The transformation is remarkable.

While it's definitely not my dream bathroom, it's a bathroom that we can absolutely live with, and doesn't hurt the resale value of our home the way it may have before. Mark has already installed a nice white cabinet above the toilet that adds more dimension (and storage) to the room. Overall it was well worth the weekend of work it took, and I think I'll leave this room alone for a while. :)