Patch job?
I've lately developed a habit of standing in the bathroom, staring at the wall.
(You may well ask. The reason for this behaviour will become apparent.)
My bathroom is more than a little tired. It suffers from a combination of outdated fixings and the disturbingly poor DIY operations of a previous owner. When I first moved in, such small improvements as could be quickly achieved were completed by my industrious parents, but that was several years ago, and the room's condition has continued to deteriorate.
The real problem is a lack of ventilation. There's no extraction fan; only a window to let out the inevitable moisture. To compound the issue, the walls are not tiled and moisture-proofed like a more modern bathroom, merely painted Gib like the rest of the house.
What the room really needs is a complete renovation. That will happen one of these days, but it's hardly possible in the present circumstances. What I can do is try and affect some small cosmetic improvements that will at least make it look more respectable at a glance. In other words, a patch up.
The area most in need of attention is one corner above the bath. This is the spot that led to my wall-pondering activities. It's where the damp has had the worst effect, cracking the paint and showing spots of mould. At some point I had sanded this back, but failed to complete the job, leaving it to deteriorate further. Not the smartest move.
There was some paint in the garage left over from the original paint job. From the weight of the pail, there wasn't all that much paint left, but enough to touch up the worst areas: the corner I've already described, plus a few other patchy bits near the ceiling where dampness tends to accumulate.
I started by sanding the problem areas, and applied filler in places where flaking had made the surface uneven. Most of the spots I was working on were high up, and since I'm a bit of a shortie, I had some difficulty reaching. After experimentation with ladder, step stool and other possible options, I set a dining chair in the bath. It was slightly too wide to sit on the bottom of the bath, more jammed in against the sides. This made a reasonably solid perch; it didn't tend to move about, instead it merely creaked alarmingly under my weight, giving me pleasant visions of the chair snapping a leg and catapulting its occupant across the room.
A little more sanding once the filler had dried, and I was ready to paint. I fetched the appropriate pail and took the lid off. Immediately, I knew something wasn't right: that lid came off too easily. And inside, there were a few centimetres of paint, dried solid.
Well, that's a setback.
I wandered about the house for a bit, considering my options. Of the correct paint, there was none. None usable, that is. Even if I could go to a shop and get more, I wouldn't know the exact colour it was. The only other paint I had in sufficient quantity was the creamy stuff I used in the wardrobe the other day. When wet, it seems a similar colour to that of the rest of the house, but once dried it is much yellower. There'd be no painting a patch here and there, it's the whole room or nothing.
I'm not much fussed on the idea of a yellowy bathroom. But it's what I've got, and we've already covered the undesirability of leaving a job half-done. Whole bathroom paint job it is.
Guess what you'll be reading about tomorrow?
(You may well ask. The reason for this behaviour will become apparent.)
My bathroom is more than a little tired. It suffers from a combination of outdated fixings and the disturbingly poor DIY operations of a previous owner. When I first moved in, such small improvements as could be quickly achieved were completed by my industrious parents, but that was several years ago, and the room's condition has continued to deteriorate.
The real problem is a lack of ventilation. There's no extraction fan; only a window to let out the inevitable moisture. To compound the issue, the walls are not tiled and moisture-proofed like a more modern bathroom, merely painted Gib like the rest of the house.
What the room really needs is a complete renovation. That will happen one of these days, but it's hardly possible in the present circumstances. What I can do is try and affect some small cosmetic improvements that will at least make it look more respectable at a glance. In other words, a patch up.
The area most in need of attention is one corner above the bath. This is the spot that led to my wall-pondering activities. It's where the damp has had the worst effect, cracking the paint and showing spots of mould. At some point I had sanded this back, but failed to complete the job, leaving it to deteriorate further. Not the smartest move.
There was some paint in the garage left over from the original paint job. From the weight of the pail, there wasn't all that much paint left, but enough to touch up the worst areas: the corner I've already described, plus a few other patchy bits near the ceiling where dampness tends to accumulate.
I started by sanding the problem areas, and applied filler in places where flaking had made the surface uneven. Most of the spots I was working on were high up, and since I'm a bit of a shortie, I had some difficulty reaching. After experimentation with ladder, step stool and other possible options, I set a dining chair in the bath. It was slightly too wide to sit on the bottom of the bath, more jammed in against the sides. This made a reasonably solid perch; it didn't tend to move about, instead it merely creaked alarmingly under my weight, giving me pleasant visions of the chair snapping a leg and catapulting its occupant across the room.
A little more sanding once the filler had dried, and I was ready to paint. I fetched the appropriate pail and took the lid off. Immediately, I knew something wasn't right: that lid came off too easily. And inside, there were a few centimetres of paint, dried solid.
Well, that's a setback.
I wandered about the house for a bit, considering my options. Of the correct paint, there was none. None usable, that is. Even if I could go to a shop and get more, I wouldn't know the exact colour it was. The only other paint I had in sufficient quantity was the creamy stuff I used in the wardrobe the other day. When wet, it seems a similar colour to that of the rest of the house, but once dried it is much yellower. There'd be no painting a patch here and there, it's the whole room or nothing.
I'm not much fussed on the idea of a yellowy bathroom. But it's what I've got, and we've already covered the undesirability of leaving a job half-done. Whole bathroom paint job it is.
Guess what you'll be reading about tomorrow?
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