There are two kinds of people in this world…those who choose to hang wallpaper in their homes, and those who 40 years later end up scraping it off when the old people sell the house. Okay. It’s nowhere near as simple as that, I know. But I definitely fall into the second category.
I simply cannot ever see myself choosing to hang wallpaper in my home. I’m a plain-jane kind of girl, generally. Tonight I just spent three hours scraping nasty old wallpaper off the one kitchen wall that was papered, and I’m thanking my stars they didn’t do ALL the walls. The Courts – the old farts from whom we bought our house – apparently fall into the first category. Lucky for us, the paper in the other areas where they chose to decorate was old enough, cheap enough, or poorly enough installed that it peeled right off with almost no resistance. I still have to wash down the walls in the hall and the entryway with wallpaper-glue-remover, but from my experience with the stairwell, that part is easy.
The paper in the kitchen was another story. In the first pass, I managed to peel off the top layer of the paper – the waterproof part obviously meant to be washable. In the second, I peeled off the bottom layer that looked like a cross between tissue and toilet paper, and in the third pass I scraped off the remaining bits that were stubbornly attached and came off looking like giant spitballs. Blech.
This was a project I had been putting off basically since we moved in, and I was forced to face it by the plastering/patching guy who came to bid out the job of patching up the many holes left in the kitchen walls by the plumbers and the electrician, not to mention the kitchy telephone nook. Part of me wanted to keep the telephone nook as part of the character of the house, but a bigger part of me said no, not going to pay to replace the nasty old yellow formica countertop part of it with expensive Silestone when I can cover it up and be done with it. Who needs a telephone nook in these days of cordless phones? Not me, at least. Plastering dude said he’d do the job for $550 next Tuesday, as long as I had gotten rid of the paper before then. I said Okee Dokee.
Unfortunately, under the paper there is a layer of peeling paint, which looks like someone unsuccessfully tried to scrape off some time in the distant past. I’m pretty sure we’re going to have to sand the walls smooth before we can prime and paint over it. D’oh! It could be worse.
In other news, Julie lived up to her nickname of Monkey today. She kept trying to climb ALL OVER me. I have no idea why she enjoys stepping on my feet, but she does and it hurts. So does a 30-pound toddler climbing up your legs and sliding down when you’re trying to relax for ten minutes with your feet propped up on the coffee table. And when I tried sitting tailor-style to keep her from doing this, she cried and told me to put my feet back on the table where they apparently belong. By the time Joe came home, I was laying curled up on the couch and she was standing gleefully on the coffee table. At least neither of us was crying.
I made Joe take me out for dinner, where I indulged in a banana-chocolate milkshake, onion rings and a bacon cheeseburger. At least the heartburn is giving me a break at the moment.