strip a little, paint a little, strip a little...

Strip a LOT!

One drawback to our house from the very beginning were the many walls covered with wall paper of... well, let's just say not our taste. We knew there would be wallpaper stripping in our future, but we put it off for a long time out of, I admit it, fear. I heard such horror stories! One of my colleagues told me that before she had to remove wallpaper again she would move houses!

But moving wasn't an option. And the wallpaper just had to go. Had. To. Go.

So it did.
The hallway first...

This is a kind of wall board rather than wall paper. It's fake paneling on the bottom half and fake off white moire stripe on the top. Nailed into the wall with seventy bazillion tiny nails.With a strip of molding nailed across the seam.

This is the crown molding that previous owner put up... if you know what crown molding is and how it's supposed to work you'll see what's wrong with this picture. Even if you have no idea how crown molding is supposed to be installed you can still see the interesting way the corner miter was just... totally ignored ("We don't need no stinkin' corners!").

So we ripped off the moldings and the wall board thinking "This is a breeze!" and found...

The previous wall treatment that they had started and given up on... burlap cloth on the bottom and a woven reed and grass over foil wallpaper on top. 

It was HORRIBLE to get off! We had to rip the layer of reeds off with a scraper; massively puncture with a scoring tool and then saturate the foil; and then slooowly putty knife scrape it off... inch by aggravating inch. 

I didn't blame those owners one bit for giving up halfway and covering it with the wallboard. I was half tempted to reapply it myself a time or two. Or three. 

But we persevered (and perspired)... 

and got the wall completely clean...

patched and sanded the thousands of nail holes... and painted.

It's kind of hard to photograph as it's a hallway and not conducive to wide angle photos, but we continued the fireplace wall grey up one side and white around the remainder. And we love it! It's so much brighter and cleaner feeling. And the effect of the grey wall traveling up the stairs makes the space feel like it goes on...

I will continue to the easier, yet more controversial, wallpaper removal in the living room next time.
AND... I knit a pair of socks! yes, you heard right. I knit. And it was a pair. I will share that next time too.