Weekend Project

This weekend I canceled all my plans due to a nasty little cold. It lodged itself in my throat last Thursday and has been sticking around. I took the time to embark on a long over due home improvement project. I couldn't just sit there and rest because I would have gone crazy AND a good number of my friends were in Livermore for Holly's wedding AND my entire family was in Sacramento without me (yes poor me all alone).

The project was to finally remove the hideous wallpaper in my sink area. It had foil in it. Yes foil. It was disgusting. I'd been planning on removing this from the time I moved in but somehow there was always something better to do.


BEFORE - Pretty Wallpaper!

First step was to determine how to remove the wallpaper. Julie Long recommended using 3 parts fabric softener to 1 part water. It worked!



Actually first step was to remove the wall sized mirror from above the sink. Luckily I was able to remove it without breaking it. Phew!

After removing all the wallpaper I drove over to Home Depot to find some primer. I wandered the halls for a bit looking very confused. The men at Home Depot were SO helpful! All of them offered assistance. When I finally got to the paint section there were far too many options so I accepted some help from the guy stocking spray paint (spray paint seems so fun!). He asked if all the wallpaper had been removed and I was unsure if it really had because there was this hideous pink and red flower wallpaper under parts of the wallpaper I removed. I told him that most of it was gone and that I really needed some good solid primer to make the paint stick. He led me in the right direction. Once home I started applying the primer. Man it was hard work! It took a lot of muscle to get that primer to distribute across the 4 very small walls of the sink area.



I decided to let the primer dry over night before I started in on the actual paint. For the paint I did not chose a special color from Home Depot. There is a gallon of paint that is in my kitchen left there by the previous tenant? maybe by the building?? Regardless the color left behind was used on the replacement stove project. Or so I thought. I mistakenly assumed it was the same color as the rest of the apartment. Turns out it wasn't the same color but it works. Once the paint dried I had to get that giant mirror back into position without breaking it. Let me tell you it got a little dicey there for a few minutes but it all turned out a-okay (I had visions of slashed arteries going through my mind as I was trying maneuver it).





So that's my weekend project. The paint color is not what I would have chosen for myself but the paint was free and it's SO much better than that wallpaper. I'll be making further improvements in the coming weeks/months.