With the thought of the bathroom weighing heavy on my mind I got up out of my chair and headed to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Bearing the steaming cups upstairs I start to notice all the things on the way that I have been steadfastly ignoring for a year or so now. There are some nailholes in the wall that I never got around to patching, then there is the place on the stair wall where Ally put her foot through the sheetrock two years ago. I patched it but never painted it. I sighed as I entered the bedroom to begin the morning ritual; coffee while I think about things. Well, to be honest, coffee while I put things off for an hour.
A half hour later I head back downstairs with the empty cups and a clearer head. I need tools and in order to get to the tools I need I'm going to have to organize the laundry room. This may sound strange but that's where all my extra tool storage is in the house. For the last year since I have been avoiding house reno projects things have become disorganized and jumbled. I can't find anything.
So I set to work. An hour later I was finished and had found the tools I needed. It was a bonus that the laundry room was fairly organized now. I had been planning to do that project after New Year's and now I wouldn't have to. My heart was light as I contemplated what to do next. My mind went back to that bathroom. I had wallpapered it about two years ago (maybe more)and it was perfect. I thought. I went on vacation and when I came back it was all wrinkled. The walls had moved. I fixed it again. Again it wrinkled. I got so frustrated I ripped the wallpaper off the walls and that had remained the status quo every since. The bathroom was an eyesore with large shreds of wallpaper hanging off the wall, no sink, tile unfinished. No towel rack, no TP holder, nothing but a toilet in there. It was time to fix it. And suddenly I had an idea. An idea that excited me. I would just texture right over the wallpaper! What a great idea!
I wasted no time but went right to the hardware store and stocked up on plenty of joint compound. I came back and dug out my favorite putty knife and set to work. Texturing was something I had some experience at, having had to redo the entire kitchen after Tommy almost burned it down six years ago now. I applied the jc and made a few experimental swipes with the knife. It looked good...except it made the wallpaper bubbly. I scraped at one of the bubbles and the paper began to peel off beneath the jc. I soon found myself stripping wallpaper instead of applying more of the compound. This was all right for a while but was time consuming. After a bit I remembered I had a large sponge in the garage I had used for grouting several years ago. I got it and wet it and began to use water to help me release the wallpaper. Two long, and very tiring hours later I was still at it. How did I get myself into this? I was thinking to myself. I was covered from head to toe in jc. I had it in my hair. There was so much wallpaper on the floor I couldn't see the tile.
I finally had one wall free of paper and dry. I climbed wearily up onto my chair for the hundreth time and began to apply the jc as texture for a second time. My problem was my knife was too wide. The only other one I had was old and pitted and I couldn't get a smooth edge off of it. It looked bad. I almost started to whimper, I was so so tired.
Then I remembered something my friend Maddie had told me. She had told me that her contractor had used a sponge to smooth the jc instead of sandpaper. I leaned over and rinsed out my sponge and squeezed the water out of it. Then I smoothed over the damp jc very gently. All the whimpers went away as I stood back and looked at it. It was working! Encouraged I kept it up until the whole wall was done.
Then I had to give it up for the night. I just couldn't go another minute.
I had forgotten what it felt like to be excited about a project. Maybe Santa could bring me a finished bathroom for Christmas?? *grins*
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