Someday, A Nice Bedroom

Another update on the bedroom project. First, the photos I took yesterday and was too tired to post:

When the previous owners put up the fake wood panelling, the husband signed his name on the wall:

Where I started yesterday with the wallpaper stripping. You'll see this wall again in the next set of photos:

I stayed up working until midnight last night, with only an hour off to do some homework from the time I got back from the paint store (2pm). When I got up in the morning, I was in pain all over. But this is where I ended up:

It was slow going, but I had scraped all that wallpaper off the plaster (some of it is scratch plaster instead of finish plaster, so the wallpaper was just soaked into it).

Today I planned a bit better: I got home at 4pm, worked on homework for an hour, then went to work. Because of physical limitations (my bad knee), I was working slower than normal, but I spaced out a few breaks and managed to work pretty much straight through until I started writing this post. I finished two whole walls of wallpaper stripping, and those walls only need touching up with a razor blade to even out some funky patchwork in the plaster.

I've been using this wonderful stuff: wallpaper stripper. It's a solvent you spray on the paper, and it makes the stuff just peel right off. It's not perfect; sometimes it takes more of the stuff than they insist is required, and a bottle that was supposed to be good for 1200 square feet is not going to make it for less than 400, but it has saved a lot of time and aggravation. There are a dozen kinds of the stuff, and they all seem to be the same basic thing, so if you don't want to deal with the weight, heat, and mess of a steamer, get your butt on down to the hardware store and ask for this stuff. Follow the directions, of course.

The one thing about the wallpaper stripper is that it invites a shreddy, damp mess on the floor. I've been vacuuming as I go, two whole trips around the room with the ShopVac so far. This photo shows what a mess I made this evening:

I've actually finished that wall where you can see some paper stuck to the plaster.

When I was pulling off a piece of wallpaper earlier, I found this little carving in the plaster:

I wonder what it is about my bedroom walls that invites people to sign their names all over the place.

posted by ayse on 07/14/04