When Removing Wallpaper Rips the Wallboard

 

I recently took on a project that I'd been meaning to tackle for some time—removing the wallpaper in the hall bathroom of my parent's home and preparing the walls for paint.

Mom has never been a fan of wallpaper, especially in bathrooms. But the bathroom already had wallpaper when my parents purchased their home over a decade ago. They'd been putting off replacing it, because—been there, done that—they knew that if the walls had not been prepared properly before papering, they'd be dealing with a mess. And they were right. Here's what happened as the project got underway and how we fixed the problems.

 

Updating Kitchen Sink Fixtures

Has this ever happened to you? You start out with a simple project — to update a faucet fixture — and invariably end up replacing the trap and a whole slew of other pipes beneath the sink. What should be a 45-minute project snowballs into a whole day thing, with multiple trips to the hardware store for parts. Here's where conventional "advice" you get from sales assistants in the plumbing aisle is just *plumb* wrong and what I'll do differently next time I touch a kitchen sink.

 

Beveled Tile - The Problem With Finishing Corners

When we were renovating the bathroom, just as my marble-tub vision was starting to come to life we hit a snag with the tile that could have been a show stopper. I want to share some information that I wish I'd known then about beveled tile. Perhaps someone out there right now planning your bathroom reno will stumble across this in your planning phase, while you have all your options open. Or maybe you're right in the middle of dealing with this very issue right now, and this information might help.