Master Bath 1.1 (or "Why anyone who puts up wallpaper should be euthanized")

I'm calling this weekend's master bath makeover project "Master Bath 1.1", because it won't be worthy of even calling it half a redo. This is lipstick on a pig, at best. This is a finger in a leaking dike. This is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

I hate the master bath.

I had planned to completely ignore it until we could afford a 20k remodel (sometime in the year 3010). I was making exciting plans to build banquette seating and shelving for the kitchen dining area, or maybe some built-ins for the office. (We have lots of books in boxes that we can't unpack until we get some kind of shelving solution in place, and it's making me agitated.) I borrowed tools and learned how to use them! I had stalked the lumber sections at Home Depot and McCoy's, and I was thisclose to buying the wood needed to start a project!

Then I made the mistake of asking Ryan what HIS biggest source of frustration was with the house in its current state. Rookie mistake.

He was never a fan of the master bath any more than I was, but after the popcorn ceiling guys tore up the wallpaper in there and just left it hanging in tatters (long story, hate those guys), he became openly hostile towards it.

Moral of the story: don't ask a question if you might not like the answer.

I took today off work, and thought I'd be done stripping the wallpaper within 2 hours, 3 tops. Nooooo. NO NO NO NO. It's nothing like the dining room, where I was smugly self-congratulatory that, after I merely followed the instructions on the DIF Wallpaper Removal container, it came off cleanly in big sheets.

In the master bath it's coming off in little tiny fragments. I'm scraping and scoring and scraping and scoring and scraping and scoring. And then scraping and scoring some more. And this is what I have to show for it:

Here's what's left to remove:

What's that blue stuff with black splotches, you ask? Oh, that's just the wallpaper behind the giant ugly mirrors we removed. It's bizarre: that wallpaper appeared to stop at the margin of the mirrors, and then the newer wallpaper was put up over those edges and THEN the mirrors were installed. Yeah. That happened.

That's just a small sampler from the smorgasbord of poor choices in this "master" bath. I hate, hate everything about this bath. Sigh.

So here's the plan:

1. Ryan will join me in the wallpaper removal tomorrow, because we have to wash the walls to get the DIF and dust/debris off there before I can prime/paint, and it needs time to dry completely before I can prime/paint, so that means 4 hands instead of two.
2. While the walls are drying, I might try to get a sense for how those ugly brass light fixtures are installed so we know what to buy to replace them.
3. We need to buy light fixtures and some kind of mirror solutions over each sink/counter area. Each ugly, yellowed cultured marble sink/counter area.
4. Replace ugly brass-ish door knobs with brushed nickel door knobs.
5. Prime and paint. (I might paint the ugly faux-wood cabinets as well, not sure yet.)
6. Then we'll replace the light fixtures and hang new mirrors.
7. If time permits, we'll disassemble that shower door monstrosity and I'll just put up a shower curtain.

Sound like too much to accomplish in one weekend, especially for the inexperienced? Yeah. Is that going to stop us? NOOOOOO.

Fingers crossed we don't electrocute ourselves or kill each other!