We have a teeny tiny master bathroom. I think that is one of the easiest ways to date a house – just ask to see how big the master bathroom is in comparison to the rest of the house and it will give you a good clue. Although our house isn’t extremely old – built in 1989 I think – it definitely shares the small bathroom characteristic with other older homes. When we moved from our apartment in Athens to our house, the one space that got a LOT smaller, was our bathroom. Over the past year or so, Jason and I have learned how to dodge each other in the bathroom and time our showers and other activities to avoid us both being in such a tiny space for long periods of time. As with a lot of the other rooms in the house, the paint color kind of matched what we already owned, so there was no need to paint it right away. In the case of our bathroom, it was a light lilac shade, which went okay with our oceanside decor. However, over time, the slightly off-color of the walls and the streaky water marks (due to our malfunctioning fan) got to me. 

Here’s the before photos of our bathroom (taken with my phone, hence the bad quality). Can you tell the paint is slightly purple? And doesn’t match at all? Or maybe it’s one of those things that you have to see in person…  

 Here’s the shower curtain that we matched the new baby blue color to. In this photo you can see the purple color a little more clearly. 

So here’s how it went down: 

Jason replaced the broken motor in the fan in our bathroom – BROAN-NUTONE BP27. The broken fan was part of the problem of our streaky bathroom walls.

Good as new!

Then we took down all the fixtures, patched a few holes, and taped the room up, I did this on Sunday afternoon when Jason was studying – so it took forever! Since this little project, I have decided that the smaller the room is, the harder it is to paint. Just getting all my painting gear + my ladder + plus myself completely filled the space up! Jason couldn’t even come in to see my project it was so cramped! By the way, due to some recommendations from other bloggers, we used green frogtape and it worked okay, but next time we are using the trusty blue tape again. 🙂 

Since we were in a time crunch, we decided NOT to take out the toilet. We figured that no one is ever going to see behind there anyways- unless they are painting the room a different color. So we just covered the toilet with plastic floor covering, taped it to the sides of the toilet, and tried to get as far down with a paint brush as possible. 

In this room, we have two shiny silver towel holders that had gotten really “non-shiny” over time. Jason put his science knowledge to work and used Acetone and a rag to make them as good as new! 

One problem we ran into with this room is that we only bought a quart of paint. We thought it would be enough and would save us about $10. Well sure enough, on our second coat we ended up with 2×2 square of wall that desperately needed paint. So we had to run out and get some more. This time, we bought to sample sizes that had screw on lids that will actually be easier to use in case we need to touch-up in the future. 

Overall, we were really happy with how our weekend project turned out. This photo is still “pre-cleaning” so it should look even better for when our renters arrive!