Wallpaper and a Wall

Today we had some great help from our cousins Sam, Lindsay, and Kathryn. With their able hands we completed a room of de-wallpaper-ifying. It was a long job! We started working at 7:40pm and Sam and I didn't stop until 12:30am. We also ventured a bit into the hallway as well as Sam and I going downstairs and taking out a wall and a bit of a ceiling for fun. Lathe and plaster is messy stuff. We wore full HEPA rated masks, painters suits, and goggles. I am so tired now and feel like passing out. Tomorrow begins the cleanup of the wallpaper in that one room, as well as what occurred in the basement. We are, however, on schedule but only just barely. I REALLY hope I can keep up this momentum, but I am feeling OLD. Wednesday is the big 27! I'll be in depends soon. ;) We'll get this home down. I just hope we make our one month window!

How to Remove Ancient Wallpaper

So, we have three layers of wallpaper to remove - including three nasty layers of it plastered to the ceiling in each room. (Who does that?) AND we have to remove it from plaster. Oh, and did we mention the first layer is 62 years old? Sound impossible? Absolutely not.

This is the method. Tools need:

Cheapest fabric softener you can find

Spray bottle (or a power sprayer)

Scorer

Paint scraper

Putty knives (at least one small and one large.)

1. Scrape off whatever top layers of wallpaper possible with the paint scraper. Take care not to scrape whatever surface you have underneath. (We were dealing with temperamental plaster; take it easy.)

2. Now, use the scorer to create a mass of holes in the wallpaper. This step is very important.

3. Fill the spray bottle with fabric softener. Water it down - about half and half, or even a little less. Give it a little shake. Now, go to town on the scraped walls. DRENCH them until they're dripping. Make sure you cover all outlets and switches with plastic bags or something else genius so you don't get fried while doing this. You'll also want to find a way to protect your floor if you want to preserve it. This gets messy.

4. Next VERY IMPORTANT step: allow the fabric softener to seep through the scored wallpaper. It MUST have time to penetrate all layers of wallpaper to be effective.

5. Keep waiting for the wallpaper to soak. We're not kidding about this part. You should wait somewhere between 2 and 7 minutes - it really depends on how much wallpaper you're scraping off.

6. Did you wait at least 4 minutes? If not - go back to Step #5.

7. Now, this is where the putty knives come in. Use them to scrape off the inundated wallpaper. It should come off with a small amount of effort. The large putty knife will come in handy with large surface areas, and the small one will do great around light switches and windows. Corners are defeated pretty quickly with the small putty knife. If this gets difficult at all, you didn't get liberal enough with your fabric softener (or you didn't do Step #5 properly.) When it doubt, spray it some more.

8. Make sure you clean your wall off when you're finished. In our case, with the plaster, we are taking a sponge and soapy water to it. (It looks great now!) Have fun with the clean-up! We know it'll be a blast...

We Bought a Home!

Congrats to us! Now what? A lot of work. Tons, in fact. And we have to get it all finished within the next month. Impossible? Maybe. But we're giving it a shot. Here is a list of things that we will include in our journey through the next month: remove 62-year old wallpaper (3 layers altogether), tile a kitchen and hallway, remove all lead paint, rewire the entire house (and rip out the ceilings and some walls in the basement to do it), refinish all hardwood floors upstairs, paint, and re-do an entire kitchen. Eventually we will also re-do a bathroom, sheetrock up the walls, and carpet the downstairs. Take a deep breath.