Bad Idea

It really seemed like a harmless enough project. I have wanted to redo the kids' bathroom since we moved in here. The people before us did two colors with this froggy/caterpillar/praying mantis border going through the middle of the wall. It was sort of cute for a boy bathroom, but the border was peeling off and they didn't do a very good job painting.

We didn't have plans this weekend, so I thought this would be a good accomplishment.

This was a bad idea, for the following reasons:

1. We tried to peel some of the paper off, which was fun and a good bonding thing for Jack and me. It stopped being fun when I had paper stuck under my finger nails and it was all over the floor and I couldn't straighten my fingers out anymore.

2. To take the rest of the wallpaper off you have to spray this gooey stuff on the wall. It's gross and gets everywhere. And after about 2 hours of working with it, I read the fine print on the bottle. It said in big letters on the front that it was non-toxic, but the warnings said that it contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer.

3. The project-time doubled when I learned about the cancerness of the gel, because I then had to wash my hands every 14 seconds.

4. I had to tape and I hate taping. It falls down.

5. This is a BATHROOM I'm painting. Bathrooms are small rooms to be locked into with noxious fumes.

6. Bathrooms (especially bathrooms used by small boys) smell badly to begin with.

7. Bathrooms have tiny walls, so you can't get much done with rollers, and there is no where to turn around.

8. Bathrooms have toilets, which cannot be removed and don't actually touch the wall, but you have to paint behind them anyway. To get around the weird configuration of the toilet, I had to contort myself and get nastily smooshed up against it. Read #6 again.

9. Jack and Ryker REALLY like to help do things, so I had at least one companion in the tiny bathroom the entire time.

10. In moments of clarity I'd remember that those are my babies who are now covered in cancer goo and breathing noxious fumes, so I'd have to remove them from the bathroom and wash their hands over and over again.

Now there is one coat up and I quit. I'll do another coat whenever I forget how much I disliked the process, or whenever the ugliness of the first attempt gets to me.