Powder Room Re-Do and Wall Stencil

Not surprisingly, in the middle of doing the giant stairway project, I was inspired by Pinterest to do a new project in the powder room.

DURING (useless towel rack)

BEFORE

When we first moved in, every single wall in the house had been painted this chalky off-white color (Dover Cliffs or something like that). Boring. With the powder bath being a tiny space, I wanted to have fun with a strong color, and with my favorite color being green, I decided to go with a dark emerald color (Behr Forest Ridge). Initially I went with a semigloss, seen in the "During" picture, which was really shiny. But we lived with it for about a year.

Then I came across a framed mirror for $30 and was inspired to go back and re-do it all. First step, removing the builder-grade flat square of mirror. This is a two person job. We started off very cautiously, following instructions and taping the mirror to the wall in case it fell off on us. Hubby used wire to saw back and forth across the mastic while I held my hair dryer up to each mastic spot to loosen the glue. This was useless.

After about 20 minutes of no progress, hubby got out the crowbar and pried the mirror forward. Upside: the mirror was off the wall in about 5 minutes. Downside: the mirror took with it part of the  drywall.  Ha.

Well, while we're tearing holes in the walls, we might as well remove the useless towel rack that the builder installed on the opposite side of the room from the sink (it's bath towel-sized no less). I never understood why that towel rack was there.

Holes spackled and then sanded, it was time to repaint. I ended up going with the same color green, only this time got it in eggshell. Way better- it looks much richer when it doesn't reflect all the light. 

So how did Pinterest inspire me? I came across wall stencils. I'd thought about doing wallpaper in the bathroom but with textured walls that'd be a pain. Wall stencils looked doable. So on a whim I picked one out online and it arrived later that week. 

The pattern I picked was Victorian Baroque. It looks really cool. However, if I was to do this project again in the future, I would pick one with far less detail. Paint gummed up the tiny cutouts really quickly and it was a pain to clean.

Sticking the Stencil: I sprayed a light coat of Krylon Easy Tack on the back of the stencil. Do this in a well-ventilated area.

Paint: I used Behr Olivine latex paint. It might've been easier to clean if I'd used regular craft store acrylic paint.

Getting It Straight: 
The most important thing with a wall stencil is to get your first column straight. I held a level across the top of the stencil the first time I stuck it down to make sure it was horizontally straight. These stencils have register marks that line up in each corner as you go down, which made it easy to fit the pattern together (as long as you cleaned off the paint in each corner so you could see the marks).

Maneuvering Corners: 
The stencil was laser cut vinyl so it bent into corners pretty well. However, sometimes all those little cutout pieces didn't want to stick down which made it difficult. I used a small artist paint brush to fill in the missing swirls if I couldn't get the stencil to lay flat.

My original plan was to cover the entire bathroom with the stencil pattern. As I finished the large wall, which I loved, I thought the entire thing would be too busy. The other thing was that the stencil I'd been using was so gummed up by the end that it was impossible to clean and I'd have to order a second one. So, I decided to leave it at one wall.

Finished wall stencil

In spite of some of the hiccups, I really love how it turned out!

For the final touches, I hung the new mirror (love it!) and installed a hand towel rack next to the sink (practical, who'd have thunk?). I also painted the door and trim bright white (the next project will be to frame out the window and add crown molding).

Back to the stairs!

Stair Remodel...Step by Step...Part 1

Every spring I get this urge to do some kind of home improvement project and this spring is no exception. Actually I started playing with Pinterest and I have a huge list of home improvement projects to do this go around.

Before

Our stairs have been carpeted since they moved in. This wasn't so bad at first, but the cats had apparently decided to use the steps as their own giant scratching posts (despite the many scratching posts I have for them),  leaving tears and hole in the carpet. I also grew very tired of dragging our big vacuum up and down the steps, using the little hose to vacuum though I could never seem to get the steps as clean as the rest of the floor.

I got a quote from a professional on replacing the carpet with hardwood. It was a few thousand dollars and I couldn't justify the expense.

Then came Pinterest...and I saw someone else had redone their stairs. So I started searching and found a great tutorial here and did a lot of research on stair parts.

What lies beneath - carpet padding,
tack strips, and a mess

And then I said to my husband, let's rip up the carpet. So we carefully pulled back one step (at the top of the stairs around the corner where no one would see) to see what we were dealing with.

Wasn't too bad...tack strips and carpet padding, but the actual ODF treads underneath are terrible and whoever cut them obviously wasn't too concerned with making the edges straight. We could do this.

So in our zeal we went to Lowe's and picked up oak "retro treads." They're called retro treads because they're cut thinner so you can place them on top of the existing ODF treads. Otherwise if you're doing the whole thick tread, you have to deal with removing all of the existing treads and attaching the new treads to the stringers directly, and that is a big pain. Not to mention a safety issue - stairs have to be uniformly high and wide for accident avoidance.

We then returned home to tear up all the carpet and tack strips on the bottom half of the stairs (and by "we" I mean my handy husband).  Those carpet staples are not fun to get up.

Nosing Sawed Off
 Subtreads are now flush with the risers

If you notice, the lovely particle board tread have rounded edges that the carpet fits over. To use the retrotreads, you have to have a flat edge. So we used a combination square to measure how much needed to be cut off, then screwed a 1x3 down a long the line to act as a guide for the circular saw. This part was incredibly messy and got sawdust everywhere, and set off the smoke alarms three times.

Tread Tool

Now that the subtreads are flush with the risers (the part of the step that's vertical), it was time to start cutting our retrotreads. Of course, not a single step is the same shape. Shocking. So the hubby found a "tread tool" online at a box store, which are the metal pieces you see in the photo. You attach those metal pieces to a 1x2 board, adjust them to the right angle for each step and tighten down. You can then pick it up in the middle, lay it down on your new tread, and mark your lines for cutting.

Note: Learn from our mistake and label the "front" of the tread tool (after the photo above I wrote it on the 1x2). Otherwise you can cut the new tread backwards. Fortunately because each step is a slightly different shape, the tread that was cut backwards fit another step. 

After this handy hubby cut each tread with the circular saw using a finishing blade and fit it into its new home. This did result in some minor wall damage and lots of swearing. (During this process, I was distracted by the ugly flat builder mirror in the powder room and decided to take it down which led to holes in the wall there and a new project which I will cover in another post).

All bottom treads are cut and fitted!
Now to take them back to the garage for staining.

But now the bottom ones are all cut and labeled by number so I can start staining! They're looking good! We're going to stain them dark to match all our dark cherry wood and install white risers.

Ralph is not a fan of demolition.

The landings will be the next challenge...

See the whole project:

Stair Remodel...Step by Step...Part 2 Treads and Risers

Stair Remodel...Step by Step...Part 3 The Landings