Giftcard Winner And Wall Texture Details

I got a comment from a reader yesterday that reminded me that I had never announced the winner of the $25 Mandee gift card giveaway.  My husband drew a number last Wednesday, and the winner was Donna S.  I notified Donna and the rep at Mandee who sent out the gift card, but I forgot to post the winner on my blog.  Sorry about that!

I also got a question asking how I did the texture on the bathroom walls, so I’ll try to describe the process.  I used about two gallons of drywall mud for the project.  I removed all of the loose, peeling wallpaper, but was able to leave most of the paper on the walls.  The texturing was pretty labor intensive – probably not a time saver compared with stripping the wallpaper, but I like the textured look that we ended up with.

Once I had the loose wallpaper off, I started by applying a very thin layer of drywall mud.  I worked in sections roughly two feet square in order to make sure that the mud wasn’t drying out before I had finished. Once I had the thin layer in place, I went back with my 3 inch drywall trowel (if I did it again, I’d use a little bit wider one, just to make the process go a bit faster) and applied chunks of mud randomly all over the area I was working on.  Then I smoothed them down (in random directions), but without using enough pressure to remove the mud completely.  The thickest areas of mud were less than 1/8 inch, and the thinnest areas are barely there at all.  That way it dried relatively quickly and there was no cracking as it dried.  Adding the drywall mud meant that the whole room had to have a coat of primer before I could put on the finish paint.  Now that it’s done, I’m very glad I did it.  But when I was halfway through the texture/primer process, I was wishing I had picked a more simple process!

I painted the trim in the bathroom last night, and the room is now complete.  It’s an amazing transformation, and proves the power of paint and elbow grease when it comes to low-cost home improvement.  A bathroom is a great place to use up leftover paint, since it tends to be a small room.  In our case, the wall paint was left over from painting our kitchen, and the trim paint was left over from painting our other bathroom a few years ago.  But even if we had bought new paint, the project would still have been less than $75.