Home Makeover: Salone Edition (Wash Room)

Post by Lara (photos by Kevin)

When we moved to our site, we were happy about the fact that the toilet room is detached from the main house—that means that backed-up systems or things that are “mellowing” in the pot don’t make your bedroom smell bad. We were a little less excited about the fact that the washroom was also detached from the house (the toilet room, washroom, and two spare rooms are in a separate building with doors all opening to the outside).  It didn’t take long to get used to carrying our warm water 45 feet in order to take a bucket shower.  We did not, however, get used to the washroom walls.  They had not been painted in some time and were quite dirty.  We didn’t exactly feel squeaky clean coming out-- so we decided that since we had about a month at site before school started, the washroom would be our first home makeover project.  We went into town and bought some oil paint, and decided that the room was in such a state that we needed to scrape it down before we could start painting over it. That’s when we learned that the top coat of paint was not in fact oil paint but latex (here it’s called “water” paint) on top of a coat of oil paint. It came off relatively easily, but it still took us several days to remove the paint from all 4 walls. Here’s Kevin in action (check out that stellar farmer’s tan!):

Once we got the walls cleaned off, we decided that it would be best to stick with the previous color scheme: white walls except for the bottom foot or two of the wall, which were black. To spice things up, though, we thought we would add some sort of design over the white.  We also commissioned a shelf that we could put our shampoo and soap on so we wouldn’t have to carry them out every night.  Here is the room with freshly painted walls and the shelf, but before we painted our fun little design on top. Kevin is so excited, guys!

Now for the fancy part! Before you scroll down to see the fun design on the walls, take note that so far, not a single Sierra Leonean who has looked at this knew what it was supposed to be. I guess they don’t watch as many cartoons here.  Once we finished our fun design, all that was left was to sign our artwork and hang our new curtain and an LED lantern to light the room.  Voila!

Lara signing our work

Finished wash room