Saturday, June 14, 2008

Slow boat to China

Right now I am enjoying a much-needed tall limoncello and tonic. Why do I need it, you may ask? Because I spent the day stripping wallpaper, which can be found somewhere in Dante's sixth circle of hell, I believe....

Today I worked on the dining room. First interesting discovery was that there was only one layer of wallpaper. I had expected to find at least two. Nope, just one, and it was on top of bare plaster. That means, at some point, this room probably had heavily textured or flocked wallpaper, which had to be removed before this second generation of wallpaper was put up. It has never been painted, which made it that much more difficult to strip. Thankfully, it was put up with flour paste--so at least I didn't have the double whammy of commercial wallpaper adhesive PLUS bare walls. That might have been enough to convince me that the existing wallpaper wasn't so bad at all.

At long last, after about 12 hours of spritz (fabric softener and water), wait, scrape, repeat, I'm happy to say I have three of four walls finished. Woot!!

Befores:

















And afters!