A few weeks ago, we started giving our main floor powder room a face lift by removing the old ivy-patterned wallpaper.  Although it’s taken a lot longer than we expected, we’re finally getting close to calling it finished.  I’d still like to replace the faucet with something a little less gold, but, so far, we think it’s a pretty good transformation considering we’ve only spent about $175 on paint, light fixtures, and accessories.  Here are some “before and after” pictures:

Before

After

We had a couple of strong storms last summer that caused a good portion of the hillside by our house to wash into the ravine.  Throughout the summer, we had several landscape and excavating companies come out to look at it and provide estimates for fixing the problem, but it was either too big or too small of a job for most of them, so we never did anything about it.

With the ground frozen over the winter, there wasn’t much movement in the hillside, but things started to thaw out last week, followed by about four straight days of rain.  All of the runoff from the driveway started flowing over the hillside again and it washed out a little more.  With more rain in the forecast for this weekend and the edge of the ravine only about 10 feet from the driveway, we decided we needed to do something about the runoff in an attempt to prevent the any more of the hillside from washing into the ravine.

So, we spent about $150 at Lowes on drains and corrugated pipe to capture the water as it runs off the driveway and have it flowthrough the pipe to the bottom of the ravine.  We put in two drains: a long rectangluar one that we installed parallel to the driveway, which we think will catch most of the runoff, and a second 12″ square drain with a clean-out that we installed in the low spot between the driveway and the edge of the ravine.  Our plan is to have the square drain catch any overflow from the rectangular drain and it will also catch the water from the nearby hydrant so we can start using it again without fear of the water causing problems with the hillside.  The two drains are connected with a short stretch of corrugated pipe.  We then trenched from the square drain to the edge of the ravine, making sure to maintain a downward slope so the water would flow out of the drains and down the hill.  The remaining length of the 100 feet of corrugated pipe runs down the hill to the bottom of the ravine.

Overall, the project took about a half a day of work and was muddy, but pretty easy to install.  Probably the most challenging part was working with the rectangular drain kit we purchased.  It was a modular kit that we thought would be easy to assemble and install, but we had problems getting the knock outs to actually knock out and there was nothing to lock the end cap for the drain in place.  We probably wouldn’t make the choice to use that kit if we were to do it again.

Once the dirt settles around the pipe and drains and the ground dries out some, we’re planning to install some landscape fabric over the area we dug up and cover the whole thing in gravel to help prevent the water from washing any dirt into the drains and down the hill.  Then we’ll probably get some loads of broken up concrete and soil to try to build the hillside back up, start working on getting some ground cover or something to grow on it, and maybe install a short section of fence at the top of the hill since the drop off is so steep.  Although the project is far from complete, we’re hoping the work we did this week to install the drains will go a long way toward preventing the washout from getting any worse.

Over the weekend, we installed new wall sconces in the powder room we’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks.  We think they’re a big improvement over what was there before largely because they don’t stick out so far from the wall so it’s not as easy as it was with the old ones to hit your head on them when using the sink.  The shades are more opaque than what was there before, so we were worried they would make the bathroom feel dark and shadowy in comparison, but that turned out to not be a problem.

New Bathroom Sconces

After removing the old light fixtures, we discovered that, although the wiring had been updated, electrical boxes were never installed for the fixtures.  So, we made that part of the project for installing the new light fixtures.  It was made much easier when we discovered that the plaster walls of the bathroom had been replaced with drywall during a previous remodel, so cutting the holes for the electrical boxes was a much simpler task than we were expecting.

The bathroom project is getting a lot closer to being done.  I still need to paint the ceiling with a not-so-shiny paint and touch up the walls in a couple places, but then most of the work will be done.  We’re thinking about getting a narrow mirror to hang on the wall between the sconces and probably some new hardware and that should wrap up the project.

The "Before" Picture

Last weekend, we decided to start again on the project of removing all of the wallpaper in the house by focusing on the main floor powder room, which had an ivy wallpaper above the wainscoting.  The pattern wasn’t one that we found very objectionable in comparison to some of the other wallpaper in the house, but the wallpaper was starting to peel at the seams and, since it’s such a small room, we thought it would be a good place to start on a quick project.

So, last Saturday, I started on the project by removing the wallpaper.  I was glad to discover it was a strippable wallpaper, so the process was pretty easy.  I first peeled off the top vinyl-like layer to expose the tissue paper backing.  I then sprayed the tissue paper backing with a vinegar & water mixture to weaken the glue and peeled the tissue paper off the wall as well.  After giving the walls a good scrub to remove any remaining glue, they were ready to be painted.

For a paint color, we picked a Sherwin Williams color called Techno Gray.  Looking at the paint sample, we expected it to be a nice, warm gray color that maybe had a hint of green in the right light.  After painting the walls, though, we think it looks a lot more like a light sage green color that has a hint of gray in the right light.  We don’t find the color objectionable, so we’re not planning to change it, but it’s really not what we had in mind when we picked the color.

The New "Techno Gray" Paint Color

Even though I scrubbed the walls really well after removing the wallpaper, they still felt a little tacky from the glue, so I decided to start with a primer that had an 85% tint of the finished color.  After the walls were primed, I painted a single coat of the final color in a satin finish.  This is the first time I’d tried using a smaller 6″ roller that was about an inch in diameter and I thought it made a big difference, especially when painting a smaller room because it allows you to get so much closer to the trim, corners, and ceiling.  It also seemed to provide a lot better coverage than the standard rollers we normally use.  After removing the masking tape from the trim, I saw a couple places that need to be touched up again, but otherwise, the paint on the walls looks good.

The ceiling in the bathroom is currently painted the same off-white color (Sherwin Williams Modest White) as the trim, the finish is sort of shiny, and it looks like there was only one coat applied because you can see another shade of white peaking through in spots.  So, I think I’ll give the ceilings a couple coats of fresh white ceiling paint in a flat finish to hopefully hide a few of the imperfections a little better and clean it up some.  After that, I need to spend some time cleaning some caulk out of a few of the joints in the beadboard where the expansion and contraction of the boards over time has caused the caulk to crack and look pretty nasty.  I’m going to try the suggestion from This Old House to just clean out the caulk and paint the seams without re-caulking. Hopefully it’ll look a lot nicer than what we have now.

The powder room is still very much a work-in-progress, but we’re happy with the change so far.  Even though we didn’t think we minded the wallpaper when we started, we’re amazed by what a difference the paint has made.  A couple new light fixtures and it’ll feel like a whole new bathroom!