Monday, July 7, 2008

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.

2 comments:

No Kids Napping said...

From birds' nest to bright pink. Mmmm...nice. We can't wait to see the updates. Oh, and by the way, when your done there, drop by Lexington. We've got a lot of painting to do up here and too many kids and dogs keeping us from it!

Unknown said...

I get the impression that a little old lady lived there. Perhaps one that was colorblind. I think the pattern would make a nice oriantal rug with a large sofa on top of it. :-) The lavendar and yellow paint's not too bad.... - Jen