Home Improvement DIY!

Recently my husband and I decided we want to move out of our Co-op and try and buy a house. So we had our realtor come and look at our place and let us know what to fix up before they came in to do pictures. One of the problems was in the bathroom. (pictured below....... ugh)

This type of paint is called sand paint. Not something you can just glue down and paint over like a normal wall, that would be too easy. Personally I don't know who would knowingly paint their bathroom walls with this stuff. Bathrooms get damp, a damp bathroom makes the walls damp, then paint cracks and brings us to this problem right here. So with every time that my dad taught me, I decided to go cheap and try and fix it myself.

A couple things you will need first of all to fix this:

First you need some sort of crazy glue:

I chose this one from home depot because it said it works on a variety of materials and is only about $4.00

(I initially tried gorilla glue, it did't work)

Then you need some sort of spackle I like this one its starts out pink and when it dries it turns white:

Then if you (unfortunately) have a sand paint wall you going to need this stuff:

(it's about $3.00 at home depot)

NOTE: YOU NEED WHITE PAINT TO ADD THIS SAND

TO, OR WHATEVER COLOR YOUR WALL IS.

So first I took a hair dryer and made the cracked paint warm so I could glue it down without accidentally cracking the paint pieces and having them fall off. Worked like a charm. Then I took my super glue gel and glued each piece down one at a time, heating up each piece of paint and pressing it down. This glue worked quick which was nice I only had to hold it in place for 10 seconds and it stayed down.

So now we have each piece glued down:

Doesn't look much better but now I can spackle over it to make it smooth and make this crack dissapear! Below is what it looks like when it first goes on:

Then after a while you can see its starting to dry (see below)

Then its competely dry:

Then I took my white paint that I had left over from painting the moldings in my place and added it to the sand mix:

If you look closely you can see the gritty sand pieces in the paint. So I painted this stuff over the dried spackle:

Now of course the paint color doesnt match.... why would it!? So I also have extra black paint that i figured i could use to tint it slightly dark to match the color a little closer. I added 1 drop at a time, its easy to add more drops of black than it is to add white and make it brighter so start off small.

I got it close enough (make sure to mix very well) and heres the final outcome. I know it's not perfect but its way cheaper then having someone else come in and do it and it looks a hell of a lot better than when I started!