'Nother case in point:
My wife and I tore down the wallpaper in the bedroom of the apartment we used to live in so that we could repaint properly. The shit they use for paint around here more properly resembles Elmer’s glue with coloring. Thick, gloppy crap that builds up to an incredible thickness after just a couple of coats.
We stripped off the wall paper, and my reaction was like “Whoa! Did Al Capone have a party in here with a Thommy gun or what?” Zillions of holes all over the place. I swear I’ve never seen so many patched nail holes in one place in my life. No doubt someone very good with plaster could make it look good without wallpaper. My wife and I just put up some plain white wallpaper and painted it the color we wanted. Without wallpaper you would have seen every patch right through the paint.
The one thing I hate worse than wallpaper in the bathroom (I don’t care if it’s moisture resistant or not, sooner or later it’s going to look like shit) is suspended ceiling tiles in a bathroom. The runners rust, the tile mildews, turns yellow, becomes soggy, then has to be replaced with a new one which doesn’t match the old ones. What the hell are people thinking?
If I had my druthers, I’d tile every surface in the fucker (like they do in many European bathrooms) and periodically go in and pressure-wash it with bleach.
Sounds like me. My husband and I almost got divorced over hanging a paper border in our dining room. That was because our house is old and none of the walls are level in any direction, though. I think the paper itself looks just fine. In the future, though, I will pay someone else to do it.
Better remember a drain in the floor! But yes. Tile or “popcorn” ceilings in a bathroom are just mind-boggling. I’ve irritably stripped many a popcorn treatment off a bathroom ceiling and simply water-sealed and painted the wood underneath. Looks great, and no problems.
On the subject of nail holes and patching, our bathroom looks like a pipe bomb exploded in it. Nail holes all over the place, in highly unlikely locations, occasionally patched with spackle, toothpaste, you name it. I guarantee, however, that 1) you will not be able to visually pick out a single patch when I’m done with the priming and painting, and 2) there will not be so much as one drop of paint out of place on the floor or the trim. What can I say? I’m intensely anal about doing a professional job when it’s something I’ll have to look at every day…a quality I wish the jokers who put up this horrible wallpaper had a little more of.
Trade one semi-permanent problem for a more permanent one?
Texturing walls must be very carefully considered – once you do it, there’s no turning back. It’s kind of like those effin’ little landscaping rocks that the previous owner of my house spread by the ton over all of the plant beds – there really isn’t much one can do to get rid of them later on (when the fabric underneath rots letting weeds through).
Consider such permanent options very carefully. No-one is going to un-texture the wall; they’ll just sheetrock over it.
But yes. Tile or “popcorn” ceilings in a bathroom are just mind-boggling. I’ve irritably stripped many a popcorn treatment off a bathroom ceiling and simply water-sealed and painted the wood underneath. Looks great, and no problems.