First Post, First Time DIY Project.. Oh the Things I Have Learned

by Cheri Reichart

6 Materials

I had a boring old plain Jane beige 80's bathroom. I desperately wanted to do something but had never done anything other than paint a wall.
I had to look up on youtube how to put a drill bit into a drill. So many lessons I learned in doing this. Trust me when I say nothing went right the first time. This site and all blog DIYer's sites provided me with the courage to give it a go..
I have now tackled the entire house..Yikes!
The different things I did.
The miracle of paint. I painted the entire tub area, the floor, cabinets. Textured my walls with drywall mud, made a concrete counter top and replaced all faucets and made a mirror mosaic on the existing plate glass mirror.

first post first time diy project oh the things i have learned

The 80's have called... My beauty before.

The heavy splotches on the wall is the drywall mud that I experimented with to create texture.

I added black stain to my concrete sealer to give the counter a glossy black look.

Took the mirror off my medicine cabinet. I use it now to showcase funky perfume bottles.

Oh the thrill of the mosaic mirror.. Piece by piece and I learned by trial and error what works best.. A tip.. don't use Gorilla Glue Epoxy. Who knew? I thought glues and epoxies were the same...not..

My best results came from using custom ceramic tile mastic.

Beautiful black shower.

Big and best tip... Prime, Prime, Prime. Spend the money buy great polyurethane.

Paint let dry and seal before sanding and doing other things.

I had no idea that when I sanded my concrete counter tops that the dust would adhere to the paint in the tub and tile and create pits and mars throughout. Yes I had to redo the entire tub.

My thoughts... oh it has to be easy to replace a faucet....

Reality. Not always. Look at your fittings underneath the sink. Mine were old and corroded and did not come off easy. Two days after using a sledge hammer, a regular hammer, WD 40 and a hack saw and reading every tip online I bought a dremel and a pipe cutter to get the old faucet off. Tears and frustration do not work.. I was lucky I didn't damage any of the lines in my desperation to get the old lines off.

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3 of 23 questions

Joe Jones on Sep 25, 2018

Do you have pics of the faucet before? I’m a plumber and never in my life saw one I couldn’t change out in 15 min. That’s actually a long time to take. The supply lines should have been all you needed to get loose because the rest comes with the new faucet. Everything from the angle stops to the sink gets replaced. Two nuts is all , the angle stops are the shutoff valves under the sink. You don’t have to take handles or knobs or anything off of the faucet except those lines. And then of course the plastic nuts that go up over the valves to hold it to the sink.

Did you replace the supply lines under the counter when you put the new faucet in ?

also it looks like you bent the bolt that holds the faucet to the vanity top. Did you try just removing those nuts and bolts ? It looks like you tried. You have to run the nut all the way down onto the bolt before the bolt will back out too.

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Joe Jones on Sep 25, 2018

You also said invest in good polyurethane what did you use it on?

1
Bzm11686139 on Sep 25, 2018

The mirror is amazing and the medicine cabinet-turned-shelf is quite nice. How are your black surfaces holding up? I have found that my dark surfaces show more dust and dirt than medium colors.

1