operation: stinky wallpapered bathrooms

Two weeks ago my trusty side-kick Chaych and I took on a pretty exciting project over at camp. The "lobby bathrooms", for kind of a long time, have been these tiny rooms of wallpaper disaster. The wallpaper was done, certainly, with the best of intentions. But it was time for it to go. Quite frankly because it was urine soaked and peeling away from the walls. And the artwork on the walls was suffering a little too.

For this project I was basically told "go forth, and do whatever the heck you want". It was like music to my ears. Really. I got to take down the yucky wallpaper, pick out paint colors (!) and then paint-- and not even in my own house. I know it sounds crazy, but there is something so therapeutic about painting to me. Chaych and I, however, had no idea how long it would take- just stripping the wallpaper, alone. Thankfully my aunt came to visit. My sweet, retired, enjoying her vacation, aunt- and she was more than helpful in the process. Our friend Steph also willingly stripped wallpaper with us.

Here is where it all began. This is the women's bathroom.

I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the men's bathroom because we were more than anxious, especially, to get that stuff off of the walls. And luckily, the men's bathroom wallpaper came off in large portions of happiness. This is the men's bathroom, wallpaper free!

We had just been using warm water up until this point. We just saturated the walls and peeled the vinyl paper down with ease. Then, we had to scrape up the leftover glue/paste underneath the vinyl. For whatever reason, taking down the women's room wallpaper was another story. We wet the walls and ripped tiny piece by tiny piece.

We got desperate and sought out chemicals for help. We used "Dif" spray which, on the back of the bottle had a warning. The warning read: "This product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer". Apparently this warning turns up on lots of things and we really had nothing to worry about. I say, no thank you.

With a little more patience and perseverance we got the wallpaper down. Our first corner of victory!

I don't ever need to do that again... if I should be so lucky.

Then, the fun began! We started painting the walls and preparing our decorations.

I had looked at lots of antique shops and consignment stores for simple bathroom decorations- but the budget quickly dwindled. So, we found things and made things...

Finally, (and almost to the point where we would do anything to get out of those little life-sucking holes, also known as bathrooms) we finished!

The men's (a gray for underneath the chair-rail called "anonymous" and a questionable blue or green called "watermark" for the wall color)...

The women's (my aunt made that fancy curtain)...

It was a fun project and I am thankful that we were able to redo those bathrooms. Again, it was definitely time, and a bit of an improvement, I think! Not to mention, it is my greatest hope that urine (sorry, but it's true) will not saturate the semi-gloss walls like it did the wallpaper. Here's to hoping!