Pinkish lavendar

We have been asked by many if the new color of the bedroom will be the pinkish lavendar color that is in the pictures. The answer is that while that is the prettiest pink Jason has ever seen because it was what was behind the wallpaper and anything was better than the wallpaper, no, we are not keeping it that color. Other than that we have no real updates about the room since we are cleaning the walls and trying to get rid of the last stubborn bits of glue before we can prime the walls.



In the mean time, here is a look back at what happened after we put down the offer. For the cats, not much changed. There was still football to watch.

There were comfy places to take naps and to watch the humans put stuff in boxes. The boxes began to pile higher but time started to run short before the big move.

So, we called Nancy's mom to come a week early to help us pack and to do some of the last minute things. She was even there when we signed the papers, which was reassuring to know that we were on the right track. She would have stopped us if we weren't, right?Once we had keys to the house, we brought over the cats so that they could finally check out the new house. Harper loved the stairs and many different rooms. It wasn't long before he was bounding around and loving all of this new space.
Fiona, on the other hand, was not happy and refused to leave her carrier. The only home she knew was the appartment and she wanted to go back immediately. One of their favorite places was the back patio window where they could watch the birds and all of the kids go to the elementary school next door. One of the last days there, the two of them even shared a chair to enjoy the activities outside. (This truly was a rare situation. Sharing is not usually in their vocabulary.)
Moving day came and we had a great crew that came to help: both families and a few good friends in the area. It took all day and some cleaning at the appartment on the next day to get it all done. Sunday night we spent enjoying the Super Bowl amongst towers of boxes.

Once the furniture arrived and the house started to fill with familiar things, Fiona finally decided that it was ok to venture out and discover her new home. It took about a week, though, for her to really be comfortable with the new surroundings.

Take that wallpaper down!!!

We picked up all of the stuff off of the floor and moved out everything that we could. Harper and Fiona kept coming in wanting to know what was going on. Fiona even bounded in at one point looking for her scratching post and ended up on the window sill!

We did find a roll of wallpaper border that was left behind. It did not match the bedroom wallpaper, but we know now that the border in the living room is "strippable" (check out the middle word on the label). We were thrilled that at least some of the wallpaper in this house would come down without too much of a fight.

So, if the pictures of the room didn't give justice to the wallpaper and you are wondering why we dislike it sooooo much, here is a close up.

Say goodbye because you want see it in our house again!! Luckily most of it peeled off pretty easily in nice long sheets.
For the last stubborn bits that seemed to be attached with enough glue for the whole room, we added some Dif Gel by Zinsser (great stuff) and waited about 20 minutes.
With a little elbow grease, it was going, going....
And IT WAS GONE!!!!!
Next: cleaning the walls of all of the glue that was overused. By the way, if you are every crazy enough to put up wallpaper, here are our suggestions so that the next owners are not cursing you.

1. Make sure the wallpaper is strippable.

2. Do not use extra glue around the windows. These are weird enough pieces to pull down without a lot of glue to mess with.

3. The smaller pieces (ya know in between the door frames) do NOT need as much glue as a full regular sheet. The amount of glue should equal the piece of wallpaper. That is unless you are expecting the tornado to only hit the wall with the thin strips on it.

Our first remodel: The bedroom

It has been a very long time since we updated, but we can catch you up in a few words: unpacking, school, work, life, cats. (We will try to catch you up with more details as we go along, promise!) When the school year ended, the itch hit us to start our first remodel and we chose the bedroom. Remember this place:

Well, Lib (the seller) moved her stuff out. The cats moved in and let us come, too. Since about the end of February our bedroom has looked like this:

Why did we choose the bedroom to remodel first? Here are our top reasons: the wallpaper, the birds on the wallpaper, going to bed seeing the wallpaper before the lights go out, and waking up seeing the wallpaper first thing in the morning.

We pulled out a tape measure to measure the walls, doors, and windows in the room. We read online articles and books about removing wallpaper (thank God for HGTV.com). We dreamed and debated what to do with the blank canvas that would be our bedroom. What did we decide? Well, we guess you will just have to come back and read the next entry!! We will try to update every day that we work, at least. Let the project begin!!!

Here are the rest of the before pictures: