Have you ever read the book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie? You know the one, “If you give a mouse a cookie, He will ask for a glass of milk. If you give him a glass of milk, he will ask…. Well that’s how my upstairs guest bathroom started out.
When we moved in this house 8 years ago, one of the first things to go was ALL of the crazy wall paper. The guest bath had this weird mustard colored wallpaper that had huge urns with flowers on it. I tried to take it off – but no go!!! I tried everything to pull it up but no way was it coming off. So I did what I am emphatically going to tell you NOT to do. I painted it! I know – you are shocked right? And not only did I paint it, I painted it black. The room was all white, white wall, white tile, white cabinets, white toilet. And to top it off it is a tiny bathroom. By painting it black it pushed the walls out and made it feel bigger. I was in Lurve!
Flash forward 8 years. My son had just recently moved out. I was putting the room back together and found this:
Sorry, it’s so blurry… remember I mentioned it was a tiny bathroom? Well, it’s also a dark bath and really hard to get good pictures!! But I digress. As you can see the paper that wouldn’t budge . At. All. Had two pieces of the top layer torn off. How did that happen? Now what?
I knew that if I tried to take of the rest of the paper I would spend the next twenty years peeling paper of the walls, patching, etc. And I gotta tell you that it was more than my brain could handle on a good day! So again, I did what I am going to tell you NOT to do – see a pattern here?- I decided to put up beadboard wallpaper. OVER the existing wall paper. Yeah, I know! The Home Depot guy has already had two heart attacks!
So I went to Lowes and bought wall paper, interior trim bright white paint and a 1x6x8. After deciding that I wanted to install the paper 2/3 up the wall, I measured and started to hang the paper. It went up like a dream and from start to finish took me less than 45 minutes!
I then put the hubs to work and had him rip the board down to a 1x6x6, which we nailed flat on the wall. Then we ripped the 2×6 in half and laid it flat on top of the board to finish off the look.
I just love a man at work!
Here is what it looked like when we were finished. I painted the wallpaper and the board in a bright white interior latex trim paint. And it was so pretty! ( Again apologizing for the crappy pictures! Remember – dark, tiny room, most taken at a weird angle or in the mirror….)
I decided not to hang the towel bar back up but rather go for some hooks for towels, bathrobes etc.
Until… I saw the baseboards. NOT. BRIGHT. WHITE. At all. So I decided I had to paint the trim in the room. So I did. And it looked great. Until I looked at the bright white trim up against the vanity, who was as you might have guess not bright white either! Seeing where I am going here? If you give a mouse a cookie…
Stay with me for the next installment, or three or four… of the Give a Mouse a Cookie bathroom!