"Mum, why do you paint everything white?"

"Mum, why do you paint everything white?" Asks the gorgeous girl.

She asks me this so often that the boy has started on the bandwagon too. Hmmm. Their alternate suggestions aren't often to my colour palette's liking however, so I generallyanswer with:

"My dear, look what we had to start with...."

(excuse the already-painted ceiling and back corner, I only just remembered to snap some before shots)

 "It really is very yellow and aged (a bit like my skin!)"

"And even with just the ceiling and walls painted it looks sooo much better."

At this point even the gorgeous girl had to admit it was a big improvement. And she told me that I needed to paint the window frame. Why thank you for this prompting! How about you take up a brush and join in on the whitening project...

I could have left it there. I kinda liked the grey tones. And painting tiles is so much work, whilst being somehow a one-way street. Once you paint the tiles you will always be painting tiles. Cos no matter what they say the paint chips/peels/rubs, and you don't want patches showing through. Do you? Not when you've put that much effort in to paint it.

But Mr Renovation didn't like the border tile in here. It had blue and pink patterns on it. Fairly dated though not too glaringly awful. He requested that the tiles go white too. Really, it was his idea ;-) Well, that's what I told the gorgeous girl.

And so I painted the tiles, and painted the tiles. And am still painting the tiles. I slacked off yesterday and didn't complete the final coat. Today is it! Argh!

 Here's the painted window frame. Especially for the gorgeous girl. Shame we can't do anything about the mission brown aluminium window frame :-( The blind will go some way to hiding it.

The fan is to try and expel some of the paint fumes while I am applying the tile paint. It's fairly awful. So awful that Mr Renovation suggested sleeping in the spare bedroom... I did remind him that it was the tile paint that exuded the crazy fumes!

These aren't really 'after' shots are they? I'm just boosting my own moral before re-entering the toxic fumes chamber :-) The littlest one is now asleep, well she sounds asleep, and so I'm on with the job. And eventually in a decade or so we'll have some true 'after' photos; once I've removed the protectitve tape, the fan and the paint brushes/rollers, along with cleaning off the gazillion paint splatters on the floor! Oh yes, and Mr Renovation is replacing the vanity, the mirror, the towel rails etc etc. Alright then, see you in the next millennium!