More Painting and Refinishing the Sink, Again!

After much contemplation, I pulled the trigger this week and started to work on the master bathroom. The room is not in need of a redesign, just maintenance, mostly -new paint and refinishing of the teak sink surround. 

Working on a bathroom is hugely disruptive and a major pain in the ass. Having no sink and having to move the toilet is, well, tiresome to put it mildly. For some time now, I have been thinking that the color in the bathroom is looking passe, but I just couldn't bring myself to take on painting in there. 

And then, as luck would have it, the sink which was looking a little tired but still ok, became pretty badly damaged by a blob of wayward soap. The only thing that I've found that the varnish on the wood can't handle is a certain type of goat's milk soap (Zum Bar) -which is my absolute favorite brand. It takes literally a blob of the bar itself to sit in water on the finish like overnight for it to cause any damage but this did indeed happen with the very end of a bar I had sitting in a dish on the sink. 

So refinish and paint it is.  

This is the offending little spot. The last time I refinished the teak surround was in 2014 when I refinished both the sink and tub. Those posts have a lot of technical information about refinishing wood if you wish to know more about this process. Additionally, Remodelista did a very nice recap of my process here. 

I have no backsplash. This has been mostly ok, even with some pretty splashy nightly face washing. The caulking does a great job at  preventing water from traveling into the drywall.  What I have found, however, is that my previous repairs to the wall with spackling right behind the faucet handles are prone to dings by fingernails or rings I suppose. 

To remedy this I patched with a much harder filler -Bondo All Purpose Putty, to be exact. It's two part and dries much harder than spackling. I filled the dings and skim coated along the entire area that was damaged. I did two very light coats to minimize having to sand, because, as I said, this stuff cures pretty hard. 

The tub surround is still in great shape. I'm just re-caulking the perimeter here and then painting. I like to use tape when I caulk to achieve some really clean lines, especially when it's white caulk against a darker color. I'm also using paintable caulk, btw.

I haven't said what color I'm painting yet. White! White walls, white trim -Benjamin Moore Simply White (OC-117), in Matte. The trim is the same color already, but I'm re-coating in eggshell. I'm painting all the trim except the windows, which are a bitch to do and aren't really in need. You may be saying to yourself, "white, how boring!", and indeed perhaps so. However.....I am thinking that white walls, especially muted ones, will suit the wood (which is really the party in here) much better. 

I haven't yet determined what is to be done about the ceiling. It is currently white, and looks to be in a pearl finish or possibly higher, and is in perfectly good shape.  Once I get the walls done, I'll see if I need to do the ceiling, the sheen might need to come down a bit. In my opinion, painters overdo the gloss on the ceiling thing in bathrooms. It's not a steam room for god's sake.

And yes, I'm going to move that toilet when I paint, at least the tank, but I'll leave that to the last thing, when I'm coating the sink with varnish. At that point, I'll want the room to be used as little as possible and that's sure to do the trick.