This is the true story of our retro pepto pink bathroom makeover. Initially, this half bath was not going to be renovated beyond maybe removing the wallpaper, and painting the walls and maybe in 5 years we would totally redo it. Well, plans changed. I got sick of looking at it. Truthfully, you access it through our foyer, and it's the bathroom that would get most used and most viewed. After getting through most of the downstairs rooms, and realizing this was the ONLY room on the first floor that wasn't getting touched, I decided to touch it.
Reading up on painting tile, I ventured to Home Depot (where everybody knows my name) and bought several options for covering the tile. I was going to take this pepto pink wonderland and turn it into a simple, elegant bathroom.
Here is what it looked like the day of our home inspection, almost 1 year go. Can you believe we still bought this place?!?!
The wallpaper was removed, I covered and taped up until I was sick of tape and newspaper and garbage bags. This was also where I realized that holy crap, this is a tight space to work in. I then set out to Epoxy Spray paint the tile with a Tub and Tile paint kit. Complete with my gloves, cleaning solution, crappy clothes and a mask that would make any chemical war victim survive I started the process. Scrub walls with cleaner, wipe clean, dry, steel wool walls, wipe clean, dry... REPEAT THREE TIMES!?!?!? Ugh, did I mention I work full time?
Finally I got to the spray part. It went okay, not good, not horrible. The fumes were TERRIBLE. And this bathroom is not that well ventilated. So after 2 coats of the spray, and realizing I could still see ALOT of pink. I headed down to the basement to grab option #2.
A really good, highly recommended primer for tile. I primed up the walls, with 2 coats. The walls now had 4 coats and yes, I could still see pink. At this point, I'm thinking maybe it's just me, but then fabulous husband concurred.
In comes Behr's ultra pure white in the new formula and POOF! No more pink. Beautiful WHITE tile. Thank you God for creating Behr paint. And in the picture below you will see the finished product. The green walls are also a fabulous shade of Behr paint, trim is all Behr ultra pure white.
I think we can all agree, that even though the tile is not 100% perfect (please, if you come to my house don't look TOO closely) it is still sooooo much better than the pink. And don't worry all you retro tile loving people, I've got a mint green bathroom and a powder blue one as well that will NOT be getting painted over. My tile painting career began and ended with this project.
There are still some outstanding projects that need to be done to complete this bathroom. Eventually the flooring will get replaced. The medicine cabinet will be going as well. I have the new light fixture that will go above the tile, and a new outlet will need to be put in as well since the one that is built into the medicine cabinet does not work. However, if there is one thing I am sure of, I do not do electrical work. I will leave that to our electrician. I won't know what will go in the place of the old mirror/cabinet, until I take the one that is there down... stay tuned.
