Taylor Swift Wrote Me a Song About Spackle: Bathroom Repaint Day 2

This entire post in three words:  I HATE SPACKLE.

On day one, it was all fun and games and throwing up pink frosting on the walls.  Yee-haw.  Then I woke up day two and, after exercising for the pitifully short time that is the most I can handle, was ready ready ready, ready to sand.  Ready to sand that spackle!  This is what the bathroom looked like with the spackle dried:

Unfortunately, looking at it, I realized I needed a little more in a few places.  So I put up a little more here and there, and it went on more smoothly than yesterday.  I smugly decided I was getting the hang of it.

I decided to sand down the areas where I hadn't added any spackle while I waited for the new stuff to dry.  I was about to get my sand on using the sanding block that Husband obviously just had, because he has every tool ever invented, when I glanced at the can of spackle.

HOO BOY was that a lot of warnings about how I was going to die in various painful pulminary ways (okay, maybe it wasn't that graphic) if I breathed in any of the spackle!  I was duly alarmed, as anyone who has studied the asbestos crisis would be (thanks, torts class, for making me afraid of EVERYTHING).  Fortunately, if there's one person I know who would have a NIOSH-approved dust mask lying around the house, it's the one person I'm married to.

So I strapped on THAT sexiness and got to sanding.  And immediately understood why the can was covered in infinite warnings about lung disease because there was fine, ominous white powder EVERYWHERE as soon as I started sanding.  It piled up on every remotely horizontal surface: the windowsill, the tiny edge of the tile, the light switch.  I couldn't take a picture of it because I, too, was COVERED IN DEMON DUST.  It looked like I was throwing an extremely wasteful cocaine party in my bathroom.*

*(I assume?  My knowledge of cocaine parties is limited to an episode of CSI I saw once, and I don't like CSI that much, so I wasn't really paying attention.)

And I realized it was tiring wearing a big old intense mask on an 80 degree day while sanding high up on a wall.  Despite the quantity of dust given off with every motion of the sanding block, it wasn't quick work and I was deeply regretting having put up quite so much spackle yesterday.  After sanding as much as I could without getting at the new spackle I had so happily and carelessly slapped around just a little earlier, I was exhausted and realized I was going to have to do this again once the new spackle dried.  And my heart sank like a nuclear submarine when I remembered I had gone spackle-happy in the other bathroom too, which I'm not even painting - what madness had possessed me?

So I decided to call in the big guns.  But the big guns were still at work for several hours yet.  So I decided to do everything else in the interim.  I started with a dust-removing shower because I don't have a hazmat suit.  I cleaned out everything from the other bathroom so that nothing in there would be contaminated by the dust.  I washed dishes and put away a bunch of clothes (my glamorous life, ladeez and germs) and went to get groceries.  On my way to the grocery store, I went to Home Depot and bought the actual paint, which made me feel a little better that maybe someday this painting project might involve real paint.

I got Behr Premium Plus Ultra because how fancy does that sound?  Also, it's a primer and paint in one so I can just keep throwing up coats of the same thing until it looks good.  I got it in semi-gloss, which lasts longer in the bathroom.  I did not get oil based paint because that stuff is IMPOSSIBLE to clean.  I don't care if the Internet says it lasts even longer in the bathroom.  This house is probably not going to last that long.  I don't need to set some kind of paint-lasting record here.  And it's the guest bathroom anyway.  That's right, I remain defiant.

I also bought a little roller, not just because it was cute, and a thingy to open the paint can because it was 46 cents.  

Then I made dinner for Husband and we watched some HGTV for inspiration and at last, I had an ally in my sanding.  Fortunately, Husband has two intense respirator-type (is this description accurate?) masks.  So we masked up and started sanding.

Since I wasn't sure if Husband had two sanding blocks, I had purchased the blue thing (a sanding sponge with holder) at Home Depot as well.  I used that while he used the block.  It went a lot more quickly with his help, though I was not entirely pleased with this exchange:

Husband:  Why do we have to sand it so much?  Why didn't you just put it up smooth in the first place?
Liz:  WHY DON'T YOU TRY DOING THAT?

It looked better once sanded.

Once we were done sanding both bathrooms...

Husband:  Are you painting in this bathroom too?
Liz:  No.
Husband:  Why did you spackle everywhere?
Liz:  You told me to!
Husband:  No I didn't.
Liz:  Well, then, um, I thought of it!
Husband:  I thought you were just going to spackle the hole.

Ahem.  Once we were done sanding both bathrooms, both of them were covered in the white dust.  You haven't seen this much dust outside of a vacuum cleaner commercial.

If there wasn't so much white in that bathroom, you could really see how bad it was.  So I got out the vacuum and started using the hose to vacuum off the window sill, the top of the shower wall, the edges of the tile, the tops of the bathtub fixtures... everything.  Everything was covered in it and had to be vacuumed, and it took forever.  And once I had vacuumed everything, then I had to wipe it down with a wet wipe to get the remnants.  And then I was about to die of hating dust, so Husband took over wet-Swiffering the floors because he is the best.  

It seemed that most of the dust was gone, at last.  After necessary de-dusting showers (I was on my second of the day), we then got down to removing the hardware from the bathroom.  Down came the mirror, towel bar, towel ring, and lighting fixture.  So the bathroom looked like this at the end of the day:

And I looked like this:

Allie Brosh / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

To sum up:  I HATE SPACKLE.  It takes forever to sand and forever + two hours to clean up and if you don't wear a big ol' mask you might get a lung problem.  As I informed Husband, I am never spackling again.  Me and that can of spackle are never, ever, ever, getting back together.  Ever.