Bathroom Renovation

Renovation has begun on the Bathroom! Our house was built in the 30’s and we think the last time the bathroom was renovated was in the 70’s, and that would have been to make the soaking tub into a shower.  We are guessing that by the linoleum yellow floor that was installed beneath the wall partition.

 My fiance and I began the demolition of one small wall a few weeks ago, took off the wallpaper to expose green painted walls, and removed the chair rail to cover the transition of the stucco stippled below the rail to the smooth painted wall above it. 

We decided to cover the entire wall with joint compound to even out the textures and make the walls have a consistent adobe-like feel.

   

We used the most Green Joint Compound we could find at Lowe’s.        

And applied it using an 11″ trowel and creativity.  It was easier to work with thick blobs, a mixture of compound to a little water, giving the paste a little thicker than cake batter mix consistency.  Thick blobs that occasionally plopped on the floor, with as little as much swiping as possible to give a clean, uniformed stroke look worked best.

In an effort to salvage and reuse most of the demolition material we separated the drywall from the studs, the plastic shower liner from the metal, recycled most and gave the wood away to someone who uses a wood stove to heat their home.  We saved a piece of drywall large enough to fill the two foot by 6″ hole created in the ceiling from taking down the wall.  My fiance did a nice job patching the ceiling and matching the texture with a paint brush.

Taking down the wall and clean up took about two hours for us to work together.  Wallpaper and glue stripping took about 4 hours, and plastering has taken 6 hours so far. 

I am researching a Kilz to use and have found:

Kilz Clean Start zero-VOC water-based primer, sealer, and stainblocker improves, strengthens, and reduces top-coat paint appearance, the maker says. The low-odor product provides a mildew-resistant finish, blocks tannin bleed, and cleans up with soap and water.

We should be able to finish plastering in the next day or so, let it dry, apply a no voc kilz and then a low voc paint from PPG.