Forgive me, I have sinned….

*Sigh*  I fear I will never become the host or a guest of one of my favorite shows….This Old House.  Kevin might understand, but the other guys……

Let me back up……(insert wavy remembery sequence here)

*Snort* I made an inadvertent funny!  It all started with a back up.  Mr. Tiger went to the basement and I heard the fateful ‘Uh, oh’.  Yeah.  Water in the laundry room.  Hallway carpet is all wet.  Carpet in the bathroom all wet, water in the shower.  It was Sunday night.  Crud.  Plumber could come, but it would cost double time.  Double crud.  Ok.  Clog removed (tree roots…..*&^$# orangeburg pipe).  Clean up done.

Next day…..um, there’s water all over the bathroom floor again.  Where is it coming from?  We mopped up and then put down some dry paper towels to see where the water is coming from.  Looks pretty clearly to be from around the base of the toilet.

Here’s the offending area…..yup, original 50’s yellow toilet.  Great paired with the turquoise block shower and psychedelic 70’s wallpaper.  Anyway, we figured the wax ring had blown out….after all it was probably the original one.  (As an aside, this room had dark blue carpet.  We pulled it out since it was soaked, and found this linoleum tile underneath….in great condition.  It has been the bright spot of this whole thing.)

So the mission today started innocently enough.  We need to change the wax ring.  Simple enough.  Then we had project snowballing.  That is how I ended up with paintbrush in hand, doing the unthinkable……painting over wallpaper.  Without priming first.

You see, while the toilet was out anyway, we should just put in a new low-flow since we were going to do it eventually.  And what better time to get rid of the hideous wallpaper?  Except when I pulled off the wallpaper on that back wall……not good.  Crumbly bits, petrified old wallpaper paste, and hints of previous ‘texturizing’.   Bleah.   Did I have any fancy primer/sealer.  Nope.

I open the can of paint…..I can at least paint the back wall so I can install the new toilet.  Ah……I had this can of paint for the upstairs bathroom (which has even worse wallpaper and was supposed to be first in line).  It’s Behr premium sateen luster something er other.  Glop, glop…..like painting with pudding.  I can do this, I think……and away I went.  It actually mostly covered, even with the light tan that is the paint color.  Second coat tomorrow, maybe a third, then I’ll be done with a bathroom makeover I hadn’t planned to do for years yet.

So, sort of ‘yay’ for forced snowballing of project, but I’ll give up my dream of being a famous DIY’er.  I don’t think they’d understand the paint over the wallpaper.