Bano!

If you give a girl license to paint a cabinet, she will notice and redo the caulk in the room, then move forward on the wall color, and fixtures, and..... Bam! Presto chango!

Mr Alex and I considered a number of paint colors for our bathroom - exhibited in the mirror, here.  We knew it only really had to suit us, and that the brushed nickel fixtures hanging around were not our favorite things, but not the worst option available in the world.  We also determined that a tall slim towel cabinet was not a longterm solution, and that the bathroom wall cabinet was not in the best location.  This is fine, I had just thrown it up there when we moved in so things would have a home, and knew it wouldn't live there forever.

So, I took the cabinet down, stored it in the living room (classy!), and had things everywhere.  That's how we knew it needed to go back up.  While Alex was away seeing his other wife in Austin (aka business travel), I took to the walls.  I removed the fixtures, all hung with anchors of varying types (including a pair intended for concrete? that held up a four-inch glass shelf), cleaned the walls, slapped up some patches and painted our bath.  We chose Sherwin Williams Spa, in Behr Paint and Primer in semi-gloss, and it is gorgeous in our well-lit, small bath.  In bright light, it's a cheerful blue, but in low light and the evening it's more sea-colored. The teal is a perfect complement to our subway shower, as well as our Sea Salt cabinet, and closely related to the ceramic knobs we added. Basically, as close to one of those beachy bathrooms as one can get, without adding seashells because we have real things to store in here.

I was able to pull this off in an afternoon, as this type of Behr can be recoated in two hours.  I rolled most of the wall space, let it dry and stuck the paint tray and roller in the fridge, then painted the trim with a sweet little Wooster shortcut brush (fantastic for ladies with small hands) and rerolled at the two hour mark.  I did recoat the trim above the shower so we could resume normal life activities, but left the rest for when we know what is going on in here, someday, someday, someday...

Alex tested out his new tool belt while rehanging our wall cabinet and fixtures for towels, etc.  He estimated it made him five times faster because he was able to move forward without putting things down and needing to find them again.  The struggle is real.

The remaining plans involve adding shelves for odds and ends, and possibly updating the light fixture to something old and cruddy that should be loved for what it is.  Or something new that serves us better than the builder-grade mirror and round globes even my grandpa thinks are "dorky."  His words, not mine.

The Ugly

Well, it's not always sunshine and roses and happy midnight paint parties here.  Sometimes, nasty projects like replacing the old dried caulk need to happen.  This is the story of how much I hate that.  The opposite of a love story.

While working on the kitchen, removing caulk from around the countertop and sink was a fun Friday night that Alex hung out with some friends, and I was totally fine with that.  It was at a comfortable height and the surfaces involved were a single slab of granite and drywall. So much easier. I found a product made by the folks of Goo Gone that is a caulk remover.  It is not extremely noxious, and not evil to the planet, and Nyobi and I found it at our hardware store for less than $10.  For three rooms that have plumbing, that's fine. It was best suited to the dried up seals around the sink and faucet, so definitely paid off.

The bathroom project was made apparent to me while I sat on the floor to paint the cabinet, and realized that the seams between the floor tile and cove-shaped baseboard tiles were caulked and it was not looking nice.  It was also a great time to observe that the flippers had painted the grout on top of the baseboard tiles gray, sloppily, as well as everything else in this place, and ratcheted up addressing this highly important area of our home as quickly as possible.  Studying, who needs that?

Once physically loosened, the GG made the work easier and has actually cleaned up some spots I have been unable to address on our floor since moving in.  Um, what was going on in here anyways?  I also bought a tool for this purpose, but was unable to find it because we live in a high-traffic, low sense of putting things away home/work environment.  I did find it and will be able to use it for the guest bath, which is on the caulk radar for sure.

So, a tool like a utility knife, with a nice sharp blade, and a "scraper", or razor blade housing, is the best friend for a project like this.  If it's possible, give a good slice to both edges of the existing caulk line with the knife.  See if it can be pulled out at all.  After you have pulled out 2" of caulk, usually all that behaves at once, you can use the razor blade to scrape the tile surface and remove the remnants from both sides of the joint.  It will be so fun.  You will be so happy you decided to do this. 

The GG spray can come in when you have caulk that does not want to be cut loose from its surface because it has dried up and is awful, and you can let it work for a bit then repeat with the razor blade. You will want to have more than one razor blade, and also the removal tool has a hook on one side to pull down, through, and away from the joint.  Over two afternoons (and evenings...), I removed from the three walls, the sink, the toilet, and also the edge of our bathtub.  Also I hate our bathtub, and that it had so much caulk on it for a reason I do not understand.  It's important after removal to clean the surface thoroughly, and walk away and let it dry fully and get your irritation under control.

If a large part of why you're redoing the caulk is that you cannot stand the current hodgepodge of colors and attention to detail, you need to do these things right or you are no better than the last.  I am not at all convinced anyone else will notice these things, but that's not the point - agewise, it's time to be done in a best case scenario, and I am not certain of the quality of the original job anyways.

In a very, very short summary of what to look for in caulk, there are silicone based ones, latex based ones, and mixtures of the two.  Silicone should be used in areas that would receive lots of water, latex ones should not.  We cannot have too many products floating around, so have limited myself to a clear silicone and a white latex. The latex is paintable so I have used it in areas like where the counter meets the painted wall in the kitchen, where we shouldn't have liquid but probably will because I cook like a crazy person.  There are cheap versions and good versions.  For how awful this process is, I, and many men on youtube, think you should get the antimicrobial one that is supposed to last ten years.  It may not, but the longest time you can possibly get out of this endeavor should be your goal. For the kitchen and bathroom sinks and our toilets, I chose a clear silicone that is going to be the death of any moisture trying to find a new home under our home.  If you are doing painting projects, there is a much less expensive latex caulk available, and we can talk about that when I am doing one of those projects.

There are a number of tools and contraptions that can be used to help smooth the "bead" of caulk, and I am not an expert or anyone who has done this in a paid environment, but I think they're only useful so far.  The best trick I have learned/seen is to use painter's tape, blue or green or whatever color of the rainbow you love and don't care about, and to create a guide for the caulk with two sides.  It is important to take care to not make this too wide, and my method is not great because I end up letting it dry and repeating the process multiple times because I am afraid to screw it up with too much caulk.  After a short dry, you can wipe up the excess not in the joint with a wet sponge, or use your finger dipped in water to smooth the line.  If there are gaps, I would rather go back and fix them after a bit of drying when the tape has been removed, but you are your own person and I am a fussy girl.

Or sometimes, I want it to be done before I go out of town, and bang out two walls so Alex could theoretically resume showering in here if he chooses.

If you made it to the end, I reward you with a silly cat picture.  In a poll of our readers, exactly one person expressed an interest in more cat pictures.  It was myself.

Bathroom Cabinet

Hey guys, we've been hiding out, mostly because we can't get a ton done every week.  There's this pesky work and studying we have to do, and it's a real drag.

I popped into Sherwin Williams on a day I was erranding around like a crazy person, and picked up a quart of cabinet and door paint, ProClassic Interior Acrylic Latex in Sea Salt,
a near-white that had a lovely green-gray tint.  Some bad things have been happening to our kitchen cabinets, like being used, and I wanted to regroup on the paint I thought we could use for them because something or other has not held up and the paint/primer needed to change before the top cabinets could be attempted.

The bathroom cabinet is just a pair of the same cabinets in the kitchen, so it was all of the same effect with none of that pesky finishing the initial project result.  I researched a lot, and decided to trust in the knowledge of the internet and NOT sand the bathroom cabinet down.  This means I could do it in the middle of the night!  A time I am not booked by any outside entities or needed for human interaction with Alex or confined by the concept of decency to neighbors.

I scrubbed the cabinet doors, false drawer fronts, and frame down with no-rinse TSP to get any speck of grime off, and let them dry well.  I have a dish brush set aside especially for this that fit into the grooves on our doors.  Then, I laid them out on the dining table.  My grandmother would not have minded, that woman did all kinds of projects on the table including gallons of poly.  I met them.  Also, I used a drop cloth, so it's fine.

I primed them with Zinssner 123, which I now love because I read you can recoat after one hour.  One hour?! That's so much faster than four.  I got a real leg up on time management in this project, even though the shop should not be open that late.  Both coats of primer did not happen in one night, but it was very exciting to know Jane's window to ruin my work would not be nearly as long.  The painter's pyramids came in handy here again, as I was able to do both sides and walk away so fast.

The cabinet frame was a little trickier, because I could not remove that to the safety of another room.  So I had to be quiet and not let my X Files viewing bother Alex, who has a real life and places to be.  I only have places I should try to be, and things I should be reading, and things I should be studying, but that's for the next day's Jenn to worry about.

I followed up with one coat of paint per day, because I do really try to do those other things I discussed.  This lovely man put the hardware back on and rehung the doors, added soft-close hinge adapters (purchased with kitchen cabinet supplies) to the doors, added new knobs, and added tip-outs to the drawer fronts, and I did a bit of patching and touchup.  Then, Alex went to Austin and I let the paint cure.

Overall, this was an extremely fast test project.  The paint was around $20 on promotion at Sherwin-Williams, the pulls (six, including two for additional storage we still need to determine) were $4 each, and the soft-close add-ons were in the large package of 25 we purchased for the kitchen, about $3 each.  The  whole thing came in around $50, and we have a less noisy, cluttered sink area to make our mornings (and nights!) a little smoother while seeing how we feel about the cabinet paint.

Over a month later, we're quite happy with the cabinet and door paint's durability, and I am quite ready to get back in the kitchen and wrap it up for good!