Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Wallpaper

Only one room in this house had wallpaper but it happened to be the room that I wanted for my son Reis who is 9 months old. Moving a 9 month old from one house to another can mess up his sleep schedule....and I don't like a baby who won't sleep. So, in an effort to make this transition as easy as possible I was determined to have Reis's room striped, primed and painted before we moved in.

We started on Saturday morning with help from some friends, one to watch Reis and another to help with the wallpaper (thanks friends!). We went with the mostly-cheap strategy of purchasing a wallpaper solution from Home Depot. Everything started out fine. The initial layer of vinyl came off with little effort and the next layer of paper adhesive came off with a little more elbow grease....but then things got interesting.

After several days of studying the walls in this room I have determined it's decorating history. The room started out with the bottom half of the walls painted a bright shade of purple and some kind of wallpaper border. It appears that at some point someone started to strip the wallpaper border by striping the vinyl layer but didn't finish the job by striping the paper adhesive layer. Instead the painted the bottom half of the walls a bright neon blue...including painting right over the wallpaper border paper adhesive. This bedroom's third life included a striped wallpaper and yet another wallpaper border. That paper adhesive with the blue paint on it was not fun to remove!!! We spent ALL day striping that stupid border. My arms and back are sore and my knees have carpet burn. Oh what I will do for design!

So the room is striped and the walls are clean. Tomorrow I vacuum, sand and prime. Friday I paint. Saturday we move in. We are cutting it close but I think we can do it.

2 comments:

  1. That room has a very "colorful" history.

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  2. Wow, good job S.!
    Our house was owned by some very 'colorful' people. Blue bedroom, purple bedroom, barbie pink bathroom. Burgundy den! We spent a fortune on primer just so we could start over....

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