My current décor is early aquarium. Blue walls, framed pictures of fish that look like Nemo, big fish, little fish, blue fish, red fish….kinda like Dr. Seuss. Oh and let’s not forget the fish enhanced shower curtain and the matching fish shaped rug. Classy huh? Hence the renovation.
I gave this serious consideration I might add. I wanted something grown up, yet not stuffy….something coordinated but not matchy matchy….and something that wouldn’t make me look seasick when I looked in the mirror. I heard green has that effect and so I went with…..beige. Ok boring you might think, but there is a method to my madness. I cannot paint a straight line. I therefore cannot paint the ceiling white and expect the beige walls to look straight and even where they meet. I also cannot reach said ceiling/wall junction without perching myself on something precarious and therefore I need to paint the ceiling the same color as the wall. Beige works!
I then needed to replace the blue striped wallpaper on the bottom half of the wall with something that went with….beige. I know, everything goes with beige, but brown seemed the most obvious and the most sophisticated especially for someone like me that admittedly has little to no taste. I went to Home Depot. They don’t sell wallpaper any more. I went to Benjamin Moore…ditto. I found a little wallpaper store locally that was closed all three times I went. I finally took my husband’s advice and went to a store on Coney Island Avenue that sold paint, paint supplies and wallpaper. (which I just found out they now call wallcovering so that they can charge twice as much) After a near knock-down dragged-out brawl over a parking spot with Svetlana the Russian bitch from hell, I went into the wallpaper covering store. (I won by the way…my car’s bigger than your car…nah nah nah nah nah!)
There were shelves and shelves with books of wallpaper. I got the impression I would have to order the paper instead of walking out with my double-roll pre-pasted brown wallcovering. A woman approached me asking if I needed assistance as she proceeded to walk passed me and into a back room. (I kid you not!) She came out, briefly apologized and asked me again if I needed assistance. I told her what I wanted and she asked me how many square feet I needed to cover. Ok she already started with the trick questions! I had no idea so I pointed to a wall and gestured about how high and how wide the area I needed to cover. She immediately said I would need just one double roll. Man she was good! (Of course she ended up selling me two just in case her instant math was off a tad….and no returns allowed by the way.) She asked what room it was for and if I had a color preference. I told her. She asked me if any part of the room was being painted. I told her. She asked what color. I told her. She looked at me and said, 'beige in a bathroom…that’s novel! Everything goes with beige.' Not the response I was looking for exactly but with that she pulled out six rolls of brown-ish paper. One was floral. Ugh One was metallic. Double Ugh One was paisley and would have been nice if it was 1962. One was, well….not brown at all. That left me with two to chose from. Both were similar, but in my desire to get this over with I chose the one I thought looked most like it would complement the beige paint I had bought. I know, I know everything goes with beige.
I also bought a paint brush and a roller tray liner. I already have the rollers from some other project I thought I might attempt and never did. I came home with my supplies, lugged them up to the fishy bathroom and began the daunting task of removing the wallpaper. I picked at, scratched at and pretty much gnawed at the paper and no matter how hard I tried a thin layer of the paper backing remained firmly in place. Piece by postage stamp sized piece I was barely able to remove a section of paper before I gave up, went on line and googled ‘how to remove old wallpaper’. To think it was there all the time, an elucidation, a solution….warm tap water. In a spray bottle. Yup, that was all it took. Spray, wait, peel. Paper off. My nails and fingertips gnawed to the nub and all I needed to do was spray water. Sometimes life isn’t fair.
I still have a lot to do in the bathroom to get it ready to be painted and papered but at least I have all my supplies. Almost. I don’t have a ladder, and I am not sure at 5’ 1” my step stool is gonna cut it. I don’t have a pole to screw into the roller to paint the ceiling unless I use the one attached to the toilet plunger which is kinda short but better than nothing. I will also need to spackle the holes when I remove the nails that hold the fish pictures unless I find some other pictures to hang in exactly the same places which is highly unlikely. I will need rags, a small bucket, rags, blue tape, some rags, a tape measure and razor and a whole lot of rags.
The excitement about my new bathroom has all but left now. The beige paint isn’t covering the blue. It will need two coats. The water atomized wallpaper turns into immovable stone if not swept up immediately, which of course I didn’t. The ‘it goes with everything’ beige paint doesn’t really match my tiles, toilet or tub. I can’t get the nails out of the wall since the one time in my life I hung something…..I hit a beam. The plunger stick, though suitable gets me three feet shy of the ceiling. I miss my fish.
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