Sensible Spending Spruce Up

The first thing we discussed was the eternal and infernal choices between wallpaper and paint for low budget renovating.
Paint is almost always cheaper because of this:
Wallpaper needs a good flat surface to show well, and also takes a lot of skilled labor to hang in spaces where the walls are not flat and the corners are awry. Lumps underneath have to be smoothed, and the walls need to be clean enough for the glue to stick. Wallpaper in bathrooms is always challenged by a steamy warm humid atmosphere. (Sorta what commercial wallpaper removers do to get the stuff to fall off the walls.)

Next we discussed the obsession over smooth flat surfaces in relation to several of my years' experience renovating in France where the 200 year old village houses I mostly worked on never had plumb, flat walls that met at right angles.

So:
Paint goes on any texture of finished wall.
Paint is cheap.
There is no need to have only one wall color in a single room.
You can even do stripes, shadow effects, murals, abstract, and more wild ideas like trompe l'oeil art effects.
A primer coat solves most difficulties.
Even large cracks and dents, and holes can be filled easily with several quick setting compounds.

So after I let her off the floor and released the choke hold she agreed that paint would be used rather than wallpaper.

So we raced off to the Home Depot for supplies.

Where she got Shocker Number Two:

There was nuttin' in the flat pack industry that would accept the (non returnable) sink she already had at a price she wanted to afford, and in a style that went with the existing mashup of style in her rented space.

So I drew her a picture of something I could build her for the same price as one of the upscale flatpacks. So we scored the materials for the counter, the repair of the walls and paint for the room at under a hundred bucks.

Here is the drawing:

We bought a four foot piece of counter top and six pieces of knotty pine 1x4 which I was allowed to pick over and arrive at six pieces of pretty well clear pine for the frame of the sink counter, and I had some recyclable panels for the rest back at the shop I hauled in from the trash pile at our loading dock.

Here is the first trial fit of the sink in the counter top:

Tune in tomorrow as we continue the adventure.