A Few Random Monday Thoughts

Here are a few Random Monday thoughts:


1. Carpet guys came this morning, bright and early, as promised. Yes, we do have a house full of new carpet that we put in when we bought the house. As of late Friday night, part of this new carpet was just a little bit browner after I spilled paint on it. It was just a small blob of paint, about orange-sized, and when it was wet, it was the perfect color to blend right in. Unfortunately, when it was dry, it looked like, well, like the dog was involved somehow. But this morning the carpet guys came and now all is well.


2. Speaking of painting, buying this tool was the best $3 I ever spent. It's not perfect, but it saved me hours of edge trimming. It worked wonderfully on along the top edges of ceilings or anywhere where two walls came together. I had to be a lot more careful with it while going along the baseboards. In fact, I had to basically lie down on the carpet to watch how close the paint pad was to the baseboard. However, who can complain about a job in such a reclining position? Not I.

3. This morning I turned down a chance to interview for a very interesting part time (12/hours a week) job working with literacy intervention with a non-profit organization in order to "stay the path" of subbing with the long term goal of one day teaching here at least half-time. Granted, this path on which I am staying is the one which I have received nary a sub call in the four weeks that I have been in the system. I'm not sure whether I am happy or unhappy about this decision, to tell the truth.


4. We had a group of about 18 people over last night for dinner. There's nothing like a big group of people coming to dinner to spur those home improvement projects (and resulting cleanup jobs) right along. I still had a bottle of 409 cleaner in hand when the first guest arrived, but the evening went pretty well.


5. A few goals for this week: Continue on in the drudgery otherwise known as Jacob's Cave O'Wallpaper. Paint Jericho's room chosen gray color. Begin sanding the china cabinet in order to "PotteryBarn-ize" it. Blog every day. Perhaps (in order to take a break from all the Home Improvement) read a new book so there will finally be a new picture in my "Books Recently Read" column.

I hope everyone has a good Monday!

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More Random Thoughts

1. Today is the day that Jason's mom flies in for a visit. Despite my desire to have most of our rooms here wallpaper-free before her arrival, I am going to have two rooms almost done, and one only barely half-done. I was feeling quite overwhelmed and heavy-laden by the job of getting it all done last night, and as a result was contemplating taking to the couch with a (non-diet) Dr. Pepper and a handful of oreos to watch "The Biggest Loser" to escape the oppression of it all. I'm loving dictionary.com's definition of heavy-laden, by the way:

heav·y-lad·en (hěv'ē-lād'n) adj.
1. Loaded with great weight.
2. Burdened with grievous cares.

However, it suddenly hit me like a lightening bolt: "It's only wallpaper. (Which, by the way, does not fall in the "grievous cares" category.) You don't have to get it done before Carol gets here." In this I consoled myself, embraced a new perspective, and went off to watch tv at peace (minus the Dr. Pepper and Oreos).

2. I was already having a little bit of a challenging day yesterday anyway. Let's just suffice it to say that the day would have gone so much better had I not had that phone call from my son's principal. That's all I'm going to say about that.

3. Finally it is finally a little cooler here. I've seriously been having trouble with all this heat in late September. Of course, this is how my childhood was, growing up in Texas, with warm weather until, say, December 24th, if at all. It's not that I can't handle the heat so much, as much as it is that I'm just mourning fall as I've known it for the past 15 years. Where are the colorful leaves? When can I pull out my sweaters? Where is that crisp feel to the air? How can you look at pumpkins when it's 100 degrees outside? Don't pumpkins melt in those temperatures?

There. I'm over it now.
Picture by CaptPiper (Creative Commons License: Attribution, Non-Commercial)
Open on Flickr

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Current Status...

This morning I gave mean looks to the Lowe's employee working in the wallpaper section...

This afternoon I decided that I had to buy new blades for my (two) wallpaper scrapers, because my existing blades were worn down/gummed up...

Tonight at dinner I looked plaintively at the remaining kitchen walls and announced that I just didn't think I could try and pull off one more piece...

If this wallpaper project were a game or a race, I think I'd be losing.

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Day Three of Wallpaper Removal

Well, there's nothing like a big home improvement project to keep those blog posts rolling in.

Today I began work on Jacob's room. I still have lots of work to do in the kitchen and by the front door, but since we're coming up on a weekend of football, that will be a good thing to do while there are games on.

Jacob's room was the first place that I tried to take off any wallpaper, all those many weeks ago. In fact, we bought the wallpaper remover spray mere days after we moved in. It was one of those "Let's Get Everything We Can Think Of So We'll Have It When We Need It" trips to Lowe's. When we got it home, we watched the instructional video, which showed a dressed-up, overly cheerful woman spray the product on the wall and then peel a large, perfect piece of wallpaper off as if it were - magic.

We decided that we would have to see this wonder for ourselves. We rushed into Jacob's room, which is by far the most wallpaper-covered room, and sprayed it on. We waited the required 20 minutes for the magic enzymes to work, and then...nothing. When we finally got some scrawny little pieces off, it pulled off a good layer of the brown drywall paper, as well.

With this in mind, I knew it would not be a fun job. And indeed, it is not. Here is the first wall I've done:

Be sure and note the large, uneven portions where the drywall paper layers have been brutally ripped off (shown below). All of these walls (and ceiling) will have to be sanded down, with any exposed gypsum sealed, smoothed over with drywall compound, primed, and painted. Woo hoo.

Of course, here is the comparison between the naked wall and the wallpapered wall:

Which is more unattractive? You be the judge.

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Day #2 of Wallpaper Removal

Today was my second day of wallpaper removal. I worked a little more in the kitchen, uncovering more thick layers of goopy wallpaper paste. I also uncovered some secret writing:

Yes, it is so cryptic that it's hard to read. You would think it would say, "Here is where the owner wants that tan wallpaper with red designs that makes you cross eyed when you look at it too long," but really it says, "All walls plain - hold off on border." This is a little confusing, since the wall does have border, but I guess they held off for as long as they could.

Here's some more naked kitchen wall:

When I tired (after a very short time) of the kitchen, I decided to work on the big wall next to the front door. There I discovered a wall that appears to have been painted before the wallpaper was put on! For this, I give the original wallpaperers an official Good Wallpapering Methods Award. This means that the paper is coming off easier, and (more importantly) without all the sticky residue.

Although, as my dad pointed out with his comment yesterday, the stickiness would keep us from ever having to buy any bulletin boards. We could just stick things right up on the wall.

Or...maybe not.

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Ooohh, Pretty...

Wow, doesn't my wallpaper removal process make the room look pretty? Mmmm hmmm, it does. This is the first section that I have done, and it actually came off easier than I thought it would. That's probably because I have been reading up on wallpaper removal (in order to delay the actual process), and the best methods to try. The top-secret method I finally arrived on involves store-bought spray, the tool that scrapes holes in the wallpaper, and saran wrap. That's all I can tell you.

Unfortunately, the wallpaper here left behind a rather thick layer of white, goopy adhesive. I've tried scraping some of it off, but it's going to take more than that. In fact, it leaves the wall quite sticky, which allows me to do this:

This:

This:

(Below is a closeup of that last "this". Yes, it is an M&M. No, we didn't eat it after we unstuck it.)

And this:

I wondered if the dog would stick, but she just would not cooperate in that experiment.

Let's just hope she doesn't walk too close to it and find out anyway.

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The Wallpaper Museum

I think that I have mentioned the wallpaper in our house before. In fact, our new house came heavy laden with wallpaper. We actually have six rooms/areas that are wallpapered in this house, and three of those have the ceilings wallpapered, as well.

Yes, they did wallpaper the ceilings, too, and not only that - they wallpapered right on the drywall, so it does - not - come - off easily, if at all. Whoever put this wallpaper up obviously didn't read their Stanley Home Improvement "How to Wallpaper" book, and did it all wrong. Then again, I am beginning to think that their aim was not to cover the walls in the latest home fashion (with the eventual plan of changing it to a new look later on). Rather, I think that their wall covering efforts were to highlight and enjoy the act of wallpapering itself - wallpapering as a means unto itself, rather than a means to an end.

I spoke to a local painter before we moved in, in an effort to find out how much he would charge to remove this wallpaper, and then paint the walls. He said that in cases like this, he never tries to remove the paper (because it just doesn't come off), and instead he paints over it. Unfortunately, this is a special process, involving words like "special oil primer", and "floating" and "many coats". However, he did say that he could do this for us - for somewhere around $5000.

As a result, I have decided that I am going to open our new home as Fresno's first Wallpaper Museum. I am going to give tours of the intricacies of the fine wallpaper methodology displayed in our home. I think I will charge everyone $5 for this fine tour, and thus make a little money to pay someone what it will cost to get rid of it for me.

As a special treat today, I am including a few shots of what will be available on this tour.

This shot and the next are ceiling shots from the kitchen and dining room. Please note the adhesion of wallpaper to all possible surface areas.

This is Jacob's room. Again, papered from head to toe.


Here is the ceiling in our bedroom. Actually, this to me is the least offensive wallpaper that we have. It's almost trendy.


This is a fine example of wallpaper matching.


Another exquisite example in our bedroom. Be sure and notice how the slats of the air vent were carefully cut and adhered to the metal covering.

This is just a shot of the fine expanse of wallpaper in the computer room. Thankfully, the ceiling of this very high room was not covered. You might have noticed the light fixture in this room and in Jacob's room. If I don't get enough proceeds from the Wallpaper Museum, I'm going to try the Museum of Aniquated Light Fixtures next.

A fine plug covering, although I'm amazed that they didn't cover the middle oval of plastic, too. Who cares about fire safety when you can have 100% coverage?

This is almost like one of those posters with the weird, randon dots all over it - if you stare at it long enough, your eyes start to cross, and you suddenly realize - Oh! It's an airvent!

Thanks for visiting the virual museum today, and come again soon. You can send your online admission/donation to my PayPal account at TheFresnoWallpaperMuseum.com.

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