Remember my bathroom?

The one I painted with stripes?  Like way back in July?  And then I said I'd post pictures but I never did?

Of course you do.  You've all been sitting around waiting patiently, just hoping for the day when I post the pictures of the stripes I painted in the bathroom.

Or you've been quietly assuming it was a total flop and you're just too tactful to mention it.

The truth is, I was waiting to post pictures until I got pictures hung up in the bathroom and it took two months to make that happen.  I can't explain why.  I re-used frames I already had on hand.  I did not have to order pictures or buy prints.  I think it's just that I use up on my energy on the stuff I absolutely have to do to get through the day and then I have nothing left over for hammering and nailing.

At any rate, I managed to get motivated yesterday.  I wanted to post before and after pictures, but I absolutely cannot find the "before" pictures.  Just keep in mind that "before," the bathroom was the lighter beige color and it had a striped shower curtain in bright, shimmery jewel tones of blue and purple and green.  Now we have this:

view from the doorway

shower curtain (from Target)

opposite the sink

up close view of the stripage

The stripe is pretty subtle, but in addition to being slightly darker than the original wall color, it has a nice metallic shimmer that appeals to the side of me that loves all things sparkly.

David thought the following picture was my grandma:

Grandma?

While flattering for my grandma, I was dismayed to learn that not only did he not recognize the actress in the picture, the name Vivien Leigh did not clarify things for him.

"Um, you know, Scarlett O'Hara."

Blank stare.

"From Gone With the Wind!"

Unconvincing nod of recognition.

"What is the matter with you?  How do you not know Scarlett O'Hara?"

Turns out, he's never seen Gone With the Wind.  Are you KIDDING me?  Not to worry, Netflix to the rescue.

Which brings me to another question:  Is it weird to have a picture of Scarlett O'Hara in your bathroom?  I'm not sure she's a permanent addition; she was intended to be more of a place holder.  This frame had been displaying a picture of David and me in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, but somehow it seemed weird to have us smiling cheerfully at whomever was sitting on our toilet.  So I decided to have Scarlett O'Hara smirk coyly at whomever was sitting on our toilet instead.  At least temporarily.

And while you're peeing,  you can also look at this:

Hey LADIES Get Funky; GENTLEMEN Prefer Your Sister

I took these photos of signs at a public restroom in London.  They made me snicker when I first saw them, and as far as I'm concerned, they still haven't lost their appeal.

postcards I bought in Florence--the photos I would have taken if these places hadn't been full of annoying tourists like us

map of the London Metro -- a romantic adventure for David and me back in 2009

I guess I forgot to take a close up picture of the collage above the toilet, which you get to look at if you pee standing up at my house!  It's photos I actually took in Verona and Florence.  Because I guess I wanted our bathroom to represent London, Italy, and the Confederate States of America.  

Anyway, the real deal is the stripes, which I still like pretty well.  I think they kind of look like wallpaper.  How did I do it?  I just left the old color up there (a kind of beige color that I think is called Keystone by Benjamin Moore) and I added a metallic stripe with the Martha Stewart metallic paint from Home Depot in Bone. I also had to buy the specialty roller that went with the paint, except my Home Depot was out of the Martha Stewart rollers so I had to buy the Ralph Lauren one.  It did the job just fine.

I measured the height of my walls, divided it by 8, and then penciled up and down each end of the wall.  Then I used green Frog painter's tape (it's the best for sealed edges with no paint leaking through) and carefully stretched it from one pencil mark to another.  I eyeballed this a little bit, and my stripes probably aren't quite perfect, but they turned out pretty sharp.  The tricky part was putting the paint on the outside of the pencil line and then the inside.  It looked like this:

And I ran out of green tape, so had to use blue at the bottom.  Turned out okay with the blue tape, too.  So once it was taped off, I just rolled on the paint.  It was a super liquidy paint, like much more watery than any kind of paint I've used before.  But it covered okay, and I was planning on doing two coats, which I definitely needed.  The whole project took two days because the metallic paint was supposed to dry 24 hours between coats, but the actual painting process went super fast because the area of the stripe wasn't very big at all.

So there you have it.  My bathroom is now striped!  Come over to admire it and allow Scarlett to watch you pee.