Call it Hoover because Wallpaper Sucks

(this one is long...prepare yourself)

Who knew that house renovations could take so much out of a person – I’m not only tired … and sore…but I broke three nails in the process and will forever have a deep seated hatred for vinyl-coated wall coverings of any sort.

Fridays prior to house renovations used to consist of date nites…I’d get my nails done…maybe we’d have dinner downtown, go see a movie, have a nite in watching Grey’s…or maybe even go to a concert to hear some of our favorite music…take a swim in the pool…just fun stuff

Want to know what this Friday nite was like? This face should say it all.

Our house has wallpaper in three areas…a border in the bedroom…a floral print in the dining room, and a circa 1980 print in the kitchen. Friday nite’s sole purpose was to rid the walls of the paper so that we could finish our painting (and move me ever closer to the decorating stage that I’m so looking forward to)

Keep in mind that I have no idea about any type of home improvement methods of doing this…however I have seen the television show Home Improvement and I’ve watched Trading Spaces and Flip this House so I thought that whatever we were doing would take about 30 minutes to an hour (that’s how long those jokers on tv take!)… I was thinking we’d rip the junk off in a snap…

Eddie showed up at the house with a spray bottle filled with what I thought would be miracle wall paper remover ...in actuality it was filled with vinegar…which when mixed with warm water…then sprayed on wallpaper… should just make the stuff peel right off ...Nothing is ever as easy as it seems… what I thought would be a quick rip and peel away turned into hours of tedious scraping

I realize that before my house can become beautiful that things may have to get ugly…and ugly it was!

Ugly and tricky. When that first layer of wall paper comes off you’re thinking woohoo yay success…until you notice that layer underneath still stuck to the wall with cement apparently. And when that crap finally does come off the wall it’s like papier mache… it’s wet and gooey and gluey…and gross…and it wants to stick to your fingers…your hands…your hair…your clothes…your floor…the wall that has already been scrapped….the bottom of your feet… everywhere

Not to mention how hard some of it was to get too...ladders to reach high borders...crawling all over counter tops to get under cabinets....Oh and that was the good part…

Some of the paper was so cemented to the wall that it didn’t come off in strips…no…we had to scrap it off in like little half inch pieces (talk about making quick progress)…and bonus…some of those little pieces came off the wall and took a nice big chunk of sheetrock off with them.
So yeah hours (and I do mean hours) after scoring, spraying, scraping, and swearing(kidding) +(alliteration bonus) …the wallpaper and most of the mess underneath it was off the walls...

Since we mangled the sheetrock underneath it in the kitchen… there’ll be some scrubbing of glue…sanding…patching and priming in our future (guess I know what we’re doing Friday nite).

In conclusion…wallpaper sucks.
If I ever go to prison (though highly unlikely…it’s possible – even Martha Stewart went)… the worst possible punishment I can imagine would be stripping wallpaper off the walls…

I’ve found that the best way to take it down…is by never putting it up in the first place.