Wallpaper, down!

So - have you given up on me yet for Hawaii trip posts?  You probably should... at this pace, I feel like I'll never get around to it.  Too much to do at work and when I'm home I either don't think of it or have too much to do (from emptying the dishwasher to changing a load of laundry to taking down wallpaper).  I'll get there, sooner or later, I'll get there.

In the mean time I have plenty more to share with you fine folks.  If you're on facebook and lucky enough to be my friend you can find all the picture of my new home - today I'm going to share a few pictures and a bit of story about taking down wallpaper.

You see, in this beautiful home, we moved in with wallpaper in the upstairs hallway (as well as going up the staircase) and wallpaper in the master bedroom.  Both of which we decided we could live with - it wasn't the best situation, but it could have been a lot worse.  Well... after a few short weeks living there, we about had it.  Steve wanted to stab the hallway wallpaper and I wanted to vomit every time I walked into our bedroom (because of the wallpaper).

I've taken down wallpaper before and, while it isn't the prettiest job, it had to come down.  I knew just the person to help me too... you see, growing up my mother always changed the looks in our houses - repainting, wallpapering, rearranging furniture, etc.  So I called my mom on Thursday and asked if she wanted to come over and help me take down wallpaper and do some painting on Friday - she agreed without even thinking about it.  Actually my mom has offered to come over while we're at work during the week and do all the painting and shit for us.  Nice offer, but there is a certain joy that comes in doing this stuff on your own - plus Steve doesn't have a lot of experience in painting, so it's good for him to get that under his belt.  I grew up painting rooms every other season, so I'd consider myself pretty fucking good at it.

Here are some before pictures:

Anyhow - so my mom came over on Friday and we got started around 11:30am taking down wall paper.  It was hard to tell at first if it was going to be easy or hard to get off.  I sprayed the wall with hot water and then started trying to peel it off right away and it wasn't coming off very easy.  Then my mom suggested scoring the wallpaper with our putty knives to try and get the water behind the paper.  We did that and after awhile it seemed to work a bit better.  The method I found to work was - score the wallpaper, spray with hot water and then wait for about 15 minutes, spraying many more times before you get to it.  So I ended up scoring and spraying the entire wall while I worked on the section I started and just made my way down the wall.  It ended up being pretty not bad.

This is the only picture I took during the process (it was too messy to keep whipping out my camera for pictures):

So anyhow - we did that entire wall behind our bed and then took a break to paint the den (which will be a different post as I need to take one or two more pictures of the finished room).  It took us roughly 5 hours to remove the wallpaper form that one wall - though it is a huge wall.  After painting I asked my mom how long she would stay for and she said she was in it for the long haul, so we took a break for dinner.  By the time, Steve was home from work and ate with us then we all went upstairs and started the soaking process on the rest of the walls.  

We got the ENTIRE room done, in less than a full day!  I think my mom ended up leaving around 10pm or so and we got a ton done.  One room completely free of wallpaper, one room painted (on 3 of the 4 walls), plus a dinner break.  Talk about kicking ass!

And now, even though we have a LOT to do to make our bedroom finished, I can actually walk into the room and not want to vomit!

So we now have to wash the walls with a chemical to remove any leftover glue - which there is plenty of, then we have to fill any holes - which there are plenty of, and then we have to sand the walls where we filled holes - which is going to be so fricken messy, THEN we can paint.  So, it's still a WIP, but at least the wallpaper is down - and that is a HUGE thing in my book!