Our weekend company has come and gone. It was so nice having the house filled with people. I absolutely love having guests stay because I love being a hostess, and enjoy spending time with family/friends. My cousins that stayed were able to enjoy our now complete guest bath.

In my earlier post I mentioned our wallpaper dilemma, and now to further expand on that.. The previous owner used wallpaper borders in multiple rooms. They have been very difficult to get down, and I’m so glad this is the last room we have to remove them from. The process we used in the other rooms was using a hair dryer and a good spray remover for the glue. This was definitely a two person job, where one would be peeling the paper while the other followed ever so slowly behind with the hair dryer to heat up and loosen the glue. Once the outer layer was gone we could then spray ‘WP Chomp’ gel remover from Home Depot on the second layer which mainly consisted of glue. This particular brand did the best job out of the few we tried, therefore I would definitely recommend it.

When it came time to remove the border in this bathroom, it was nowhere near as “easy” (if you’d call it that — can you tell I how much I dislike wallpaper borders?) to remove. Instead the paper fought back and we were fighting against it for hours. The hair dryer plan just barely worked, which led us to using lots and lots of spray and scraping. There are many different razor scrapers meant for this and they all seem to be the same. There was a wallpaper scorer that was recommended to us by someone but that did not help at all with this particular border, it seemed to make it worse. We suspect the previous owners must have used a significant amount of glue when applying the border.

Fortunately, Glenn is a skilled drywall installer and was able to patch and repair most of the parts where we dug into the wall. Although he spent so much time sanding and perfecting the wall, he still claims there are spots that bother him. Personally, I do not notice anything and I’m incredibly happy with the way it turned out. I did marry a perfectionist when it comes to handy work though, which can be both good and bad.

 

When it came time to finish up and clean the grout in the flooring, I was disappointed to find the original grout to be a dark grey. I was really hoping it had originally been white and that bleach, vinegar, or any other remedies I found online would work to make it shine through. One day down the road it would be nice to look into re-grout options, but until then I will adapt to the dark color which is sporadic throughout the bathroom making it look less consistent.

 

 

Our vanity mirror was a very random find at Kohl’s. I had been looking online, at IKEA, and various home improvement stores to find a small mirror that would work for this very small space. I spent just $20 on this mirror and it works so well! The white mirrored squares we hung on the wall next to the sink were also found for less than $20 at Kohl’s.

The light fixture was found at Home Depot, the vanity – Menard’s, faucet – Menard’s, and towel bars are from IKEA.

 

 

 

 

As always, thanks so much for reading and following us on the journey to complete this house!

Our guest bathroom is pretty much complete! Whew! It’s been a long ride, and slowly but surely we are coming to the end. The only items left are painting the door and scrubbing the grout on the floor to hopefully get it nice and white. The floor was the only part of the bathroom we didn’t change. Technically you could count the shower too, but we did tear out the door and door frame to replace with a frame-less clear glass one (the previous was a frosted 1980s style glass with a thick metal frame).

This bathroom is located on the lower level of our home which was built in 1986. It definitely had a very late 80s, early 90s, look to it and was in need of an update.

Here are a few “before” photos:

      

and here are the “afters”:

       

    

As I mentioned earlier, we are still finishing up the door paint and the floor. Once those are complete I hope to put up more pictures, in addition to writing a more detailed post about the bumps in the road we hit (like the super difficult wallpaper border that still haunts us).

The door was purchased from Menards and sits on a gliding metal track. By doing a gliding door, we are opening up a tiny bathroom with that little bit of extra room it needed. Previously, the door opened into the bathroom which made for a very tight squeeze. The track was purchased for $82 on eBay and it has been working great. The door hardware is the same from our kitchen and was purchased on Amazon. The wall color we went with is Dutchboy 435-3DB, which I’m having a hard time finding the name of online. I will make sure to update that information on my next post.

The wooden shelves above the toilet were only $10 at Home Depot. All of the accessories were purchased from TJ Maxx. I absolutely love IKEA and was excited to purchase all of our towels there. They have affordable, soft, and uniquely printed towels in a variety of colors.

    

Thanks so much for reading! I’m looking forward to many future updates on this house and all of the projects to come.