A wall-smashing time

On Saturday I went to town on the bathroom. The ride was pretty uncomfortable but town was nice. We had these ugly ceramic toilet paper and towel holders that we wanted to get rid of. I couldn't see how they were attached to the wall so I figured they were glued on or something similar to that. I found out they were actually built into the drywall. Crazy home builders! I donned protective eye-wear, ear protection, and closed the door to the bathroom. In my right hand I hefted an average hammer. With exceeding force I started smashing the ceramic holders. Shrapnel-like shards were flying everywhere. One hit my leg, which started to bleed. Oblivious to the pain I pressed on with my work as blood trickled down my leg. Soon there was nothing left but three gaping holes in the wall. As I said, crazy home builders! After I cleaned everything up and received 17 stitches (just kidding, it was just a little cut but it did bleed quite a bit), I went to Lowe's to buy drywall and other patching materials to fix the walls. I also purchased the toilet and vanity (as posted about on Saturday). I patched the holes and applied plaster. After letting it dry I sanded it and filled in holes.

After a nice Sunday break today we continued the saga of the bathroom remodel. I pulled off the baseboards in the bathroom so we can replace them. In addition to tiling the last bit of the room we needed to add more baseboard and we thought it would be easier just to replace it all instead of trying to match what was already there. It's going to be a pain to get them just the right size since we don't have a mitering saw but we'll either borrow one from a friend or have the new baseboard cut at Lowe's. Every time I've measured for the baseboard I've come up with different numbers (okay, that's not strictly true - just sometimes). We had a plumber come look at a leak - it was an easy fix.

Today I primed the walls after finishing up the last bit of plastering and sanding of the lovely holes that were left in the wall from the hideous ceramic toilet paper and towel holders. Then we painted the walls a nice shade of blue (with a hint of gray). We got the paint from some friends in our ward. It will be a nice change from the yellow that was there before. The yellow was nice but since we're redoing the bathroom we decided to really redo it. The next step is laying the tile and affixing the new baseboards (which we have yet to purchase). After that we can grout the tile (we'll grout before we put the baseboards on) and then put in the new toilet and vanity. Hopefully everything fits in well and looks good.

The old towel holder. Sorry for the weird color - the bathroom wasn't really that color.

My handiwork.

The lovely hole.

Patched walls (still needing sanding).

The new wall color - this looks a little more gray than it appears in real life.