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Monday, March 9, 2009

DIY Weekend

Last week, out of the blue, Mom decides that she wants to redo the bathroom floor. The toilet seal had been leaking and it discolored the vinyl flooring around that area. The flooring was outdated anyway, so a change was definitely needed. However, she apparently thinks I am some sort of flooring expert and on Thursday wants to know if I have a game plan yet. What?! How did this become my project and why am I the one making the decisions? It's her bathroom, she hasn't even told me what kind of floor she wants to do, what size, color etc. So, we decided to go to Home Depot Saturday morning and pick it all out. In the meantime, I spent all Friday evening reading up on different kinds of flooring and how to do it all.


Saturday morning brings us to Home Depot and we are sidetracked by the kids' project going on in the front of the store. Hailey, Mikaela, Jackson and Anderson all put together race tracks. They did very well considering there were at least 20 nails that had to be hammered and lots of pieces. I helped Anderson and he was doing really well hammering, but he doesn't have the best aim, so after hammering my fingers one too many times, I took over and finished it for him.

Onto the flooring, we checked out all our options. After looking at how many tools we would need to do ceramic tile, we took the easy (and less expensive) route and chose peel and stick tile. Now, I would have liked to do the ceramic tile as it would have been great practice, but again, it's not my bathroom. We arrived home and started taking up all the trim (we broke almost every piece) and decided if we would cover the old flooring or take it up. We eventually decided to put the new over the old except where the toilet had leaked, we took all of that part up and let it air out overnight. Long story short, we get the new tile down, I think it looks fine. Mom doesn't like it AND she doesn't like the paint color now. Ugh!


Before~


During~


After!

Now she wants to chose a different paint color. She and dad go to Home Depot and get replacement trim and new paint. She calls me and wants me to look it up on line and tell her what I think of a new color. Okay, I can do that, but there is no way that I can really tell her which one will look the best without seeing it in person. We had decided on a "sage" color. She comes home with something that looks closer to mint. We get it up on the wall and there is no way that it looks good. We use it as a base to go over the lavender color that was on the wall previously. We still need another color. This time, I go to the store and get the right color. That is mostly up on the wall now and with just a few places that the tile needs to go in, the trim and repair next to the tub, we are done. Hah! I am not sure when this project will actually be complete, but I do think it looks better than before. So, one new floor, new toilet seat, a new mirror (to replace the one I broke), new trim (to replace all the trim we broke), and three paint colors later!!! We have a nice bathroom. After doing this project, it's not looking good for all the work on our house that I have coming up!