Day 2! Full disclosure: this weekend won’t end with triumphant After photos because I won’t have our new shower curtain in hand until Tuesday. This is the drawback of real-time blogging.
All totalled, I spent way too much time on this damn grate. I just wanted to get down to bare metal so that I could give it a clean, even coat of spray paint. I should have skipped the boiling, scrubbing and sanding and gone straight to the Klean Strip. I usually don’t go all scorched earth on antique hardware but this thing isn’t precious. It’s the opposite of precious: it’s heavy as hell and it will survive the apocalypse. So, I shouldn’t have hesitated to strip it. Lesson learned. At least it was fun to use the flap wheel sander.
I also spray painted the toilet paper holder, held aloft with kabob skewers.
Back upstairs is chaotic. Lola finds comfort on his L.L. Bean box, which is very special to him for reasons unbeknownst to us.
Finished painting!
The color is Benjamin Moore’s Soot, matched by Behr – it’s the same inky-navy-black that we have on our kitchen wainscoting. Our bathroom is off of the kitchen and I like that the two rooms will now be cohesive inverses of one another.
Project Palermo 
So jealous of your white Bertoia chair!
Also, this is a nudge to show the triumphant After!