Project 1: Redo the Half-bath, Part III

After the mud dried, we sanded it down, and sprayed the texture on. I bought a can of orange peel texture from Lowe's, and using the fine texture we were supposed to get a maximum of 110 feet of texture.

We first tested the texture against the old vanity in order to get a feel for spraying the walls. N had much better control of the can, probably because he's done more spray painting than I have.

The orange peel texture is nice looking, but after the one can was finished, we felt that the walls needed more texture. We grabbed one of the cans that we found in the garage, and used that one up. The combination of the two actually looked pretty good. We decided to let it dry for a half-hour, and then we'd paint.

I should note - if I haven't already done so - that this bathroom is under the stairs, and therefore has no natural lighting. We had to turn off the power to the half-bath (which is connected to the lights and power in our master bath, and was marked on the circuit box as either "dining room" or "hallway"), and uninstalled the old, ugly light fixture, and now we are using a trouble light only to illuminate our work.

We decided to begin painting around the light fixture hole and the whole vanity wall so that perhaps we could later install the new light fixture and have better lighting for the remainder of the job. At first the job seemed to going okay, and then...





BUBBLES!

(The color of the paint isn't very vivid in these pictures.)

Another consultation with my folks, another rounds of sanding and then using mud. And yet more bubbles.

I read some online, and it turns out that not only are bubbles in the drywall when painting, priming, or using mud a very common problem, I couldn't find any true consensus on the preferred solution. Some swear by adding dish soap to the mud, others declare that the way of stirring the mud is important, and still others say that the problem doesn't exist if you use good materials, use multiple light coats of mud, and pressure down hard enough to make your arm sore. I've decided to listen to this last advice, along with the layering advice of my mom, and we have had reasonably good results.

We covered the bubbles in the areas that we painted with mud, got everything nice and tight, and then use a spray primer (KILZ) on all areas where we feel that the drywall may be prone to bubbling. We sprayed another round of texture on the sanded areas, as well as nearer the ceiling, which we had previously missed, and we noticed that the bubbles no longer seemed to appear. N has since applied one more round of KILZ, then another bit of texture, and has begun to paint the bathroom. Hopefully (hopefully!) when I get back to town the walls will looking good enough that we can move forward with the next steps.

Lessons learned: when redoing the master bathroom, which is also wallpapered, we now know that after removing the wallpaper we should prime the walls using an oil-based primer. Then we can texture and paint. I bought a water-based texture, which we put on the walls without priming them, and I think this aggravated the existing problems of the drywall. The water-based texture is marketed as less smelly, which I thought was important because this room doesn't have good ventilation. Next time, I will just live with stinky air for a few hours and run the air filter throughout the house.

Sanded, mudded bubbles:



Next steps: tile the floor, replace the baseboard, and install the new vanity. Oh, and get the new light up, new hardware installed, and hang the mirror...and replace the light switches and outlet with new white ones. And maybe rehang the door.