Wallpaper Redo

oops i did it again. speaking of, i hear britney has a new album out or about to be out? i don't really know! my oops is that i kinda sorta bought new wallpaper for the powder room and stripped the pink one off. hehe! so why??? you ask? well i loved the old stuff but when i put it up i really wasn't thinking about the whole picture. i just picked it out and put it up. but then we painted the mudroom gray and put up the blue roman shade. and also the backsplash plans were in motion and even though you don't see the kitchen from the bathroom at all, i just felt like there was this overall feeling going on that the bright pink was fighting against. another issue was the floors. the fun pink paper made no sense with the gray tile floor we have. no sense. so i wanted to tie it all together. here is the before:

during one of serena and lily's big sales, i bought this wallpaper. actually first i bought a sample to see what it would look like. it was a dead on match for the floors and really worked with the roman shade and marble tile for the kitchen backsplash. it was speaking to me big time. the only problem was that we had just put the other paper up like a year ago and there was no real need to change it practically speaking. i'm not always very practical - have you guessed that yet? ;) it took a major feat but i was able to break the news to my hubby that this was going to happen. i won't share his reaction :) but he wasn't exactly supportive!

so last week i started stripping the old paper off using a mixture of fabric softener and hot water (got that from the diy network website). and a butter knife. i really should have sprung for an actual wallpaper stripping tool but i couldn't bring myself to spend any more money on this project, even if it was only $5! plus i thought the paper would just come right off. wrong!! it was a lot of work - i spent two hours during naptime one day and only got about two and half sheets up. ugh. we also had a bit of a time crunch - i found out on wednesday that the people who we hired to hang the new stuff could fit us in on saturday. between work and the boys, i really didn't have much time so i knew i'd be pulling an all-nighter friday night.

as it happened friday night we went out to celebrate mr. r's bday (btw, a delicious meal at boston chops for any of you locals). when we got home the most amazing thing happened. my dear, sweet, loving husband offered to help me and what would have taken me all night took us about two hours working together. hallelujah! we hired commercial wallcovering to hang the new stuff which is a family run business and cheryl and her son kyle did an awesome job! they travel all over new england so definitely contact her at dblcut@comcast.net if you're in the area.

another thing that bugged me about the first wallaper was that the soffit wasn't wrapped entirely (you can see in the before pic above). they had left the bottom of the soffit un-papered and it always stuck out like a sore thumb. not anymore!

the plan to replace that cheapo vanity is still in the works - a 2014 project i hope! that sink is so not functional. i can barely even wash the boys hands in it without water going everywhere and the soap dispenser falling - need more counter space!!