And I thought it would all be so simple.

Not simple as in "easy." But simple as in "direct" or "uncomplicated".

My simple project has been a huge pain. And I realize that everyone goes through this. My plan was to replace the doors on both bathroom vanities with simple (there's that word again) square pieces of wood. Something a little more modern. So we bought wood and cut it and primed it and painted it and sanded it and attempted to install it. And it looked like crap. I don't think we have the tools to achieve what I was looking for and I'll just consider it a lesson learned. Today I'll prime the old doors and paint them and we'll just go with the old stuff but in brown instead of white. I'll live with it.

While John was wrestling with the cabinets, I repaired my bathroom walls with joint compound and lots of sanding. Then I primed the ceiling and walls with Kilz2 (latex). I heard a good tip about dealing with popcorn ceilings (ugh. But I was not willing to scrape this one off). When you paint a popcorn ceiling, roll in one direction and be done with it. Don't roll back and forth because the wet paint will loosen the popcorn and it will start to fall off randomly. I did that and it worked well. And I couldn't believe how dark that ceiling was before. The lighter color makes a nice difference.

I also scraped out the old caulk around the tub (which appeared to have been applied by a drunken blind person) and put a fresh seal down. Holy moly does it look better. Here's my tip for caulking around tile: first, use caulk meant for water areas. Put down strips of tape above and below where you want the caulk to go. Squeeze caulk out. Wet your finger and smooth out the caulk. Pull the tape off right away and carefully smooth again with your (wet) finger. On the second go-round I held my index finger perpendicular to the caulk line and smoothed. This seemed to help me stay straighter.

So today I'm back in there working. First I need to start painting the old doors. I'm using an oil-based primer as recommended by the Lowe's paint guy. On top of that goes the brown latex. Once I get that in progress I'll paint the walls and ceiling a lovely ivory color. Sigh. Wish me luck.