Saturday, May 1, 2010

So it begins...

When wallpaper gets wet you kind of have to take it off.  The stairway, spare room and hallway between our living room, kitchen, bathroom, stairway and conservatory have been wallpapered this really horrible wood chip wallpaper.  It's gotten wet in a lot of places, and moldy in others, and was peeling and hanging of the walls in some areas, so on Wednesday night I finally decided it was time to get that crap off.  
Here's Sam in the stairway looking at what we have started with excitement.  Do you see that bag next to him on the floor?  It's never left his side, he's very concerned about keeping things clean and stops to sweep and vacuum every 30 minutes evening.  Which I of course appreciate:)
This is a close up of what I mean by wood chip.  It's basically two layers of paper with saw dust between it.  You can see at the top of the picture where the top layer hasn't been peeled off yet--that's what it looked like everywhere.  It's horrible stuff.
Under the banister here we were surprised to find a board screwed into the wall, and wondered if it was possible that it was where someone had chosen to hide a large pot of gold.
But no, it was actually where they chose to hide this big gaping hole.  


If you look closely at the dark spot in the middle of this picture you will see horse hair from the 1800's which they used to use as a binding agent in plaster.  


Moving along into our little hallway, the wallpaper has already been removed to reveal a nice mint colored paint.  Mmm, mint chocolate chip ice cream...

Where are you now Chad?  Get your ass over here and explain yourself.

And now for the spare room, which held the most surprises.  I peeled back a little wallpaper and what did I find?  
More wallpaper!
It's cute:)  Kinda makes you dizzy though...
But wait, there's more!  There are actually 4 layers of wallpaper, 1 layer of styrofoam (??!!??!?!) and a layer of tin foil just to make things interesting.

Tin foil?  Really?  I'm sure there is a good, rational, totally understandable, bad reason for this and I intend to find out what it is.  

Now what do we do? .....

4 comments:

  1. Amazing! Is the wallpaper coming off easily? Have you asked anyone there what they would do? I guess you can't just paint over the last layer of wallpaper? That would be the easiest. Have you googled it? MOM

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  2. I kind of like the floral wallpaper (but maybe that's just me). What will you do for your home post-wallpaper? Paint? This looks like serious (yet kind of fun) work.

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  3. wow- I agree that that chip stuff was really bad- who thought that one up? Glad you have a great attitude- like a treasure hunt. The horse hair was cool- as long as you aren't allergic. Looking forward to the "after" pictures. Love you! Aunt J

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  4. Wow. That wood chip wallpaper makes me feel like I'm in a giant hamster cage. As a last resort, you can always prime the wallpaper with a special primer and texture right over it. Also I'm a little disturbed that Chad put that stuff up just three years ago.

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