Summer Projects #1

When my family bought our house a year and a half ago, we bought it with the idea of "improving" it...or at least I did. Needless to say, a house that an older couple built 30 years ago is going to need a little updating and work in the decor area. Wall-paper and floral print galore. I vowed to fix that. However, it's taken this long to actually do something about it, and it's still not done. But the project is started and will be finished...someday... My goal for the few short weeks I was home was just to get all that blasted wallpaper down. Painting can happen later.


I started off with my bathroom. 


Before:

 

Cute little village setting, right? GAG! It's just covering up a seam from the blue dotted mess. And that brass hardware and yellow wood? Told you it needs some help....

I removed any and all things attached to the walls (making a mess in the process- for some reason, whoever put them in felt the need to use multiple layers of screws so you think it's gonna come off, but you realize you have to take the whole thing apart into 5 different peices...annoying). Anyway, it was a process.

all the necessary tools: steamer, screwdrivers, screws, fillet knife, butcher knife...

Yeah, there are chair rails in the bathroom...what the? Those babies got pried off to get the wallpaper peeled.

Here's a before in the foreground and an after in the background.

The wallpaper itself was a lot easier to get off than I expected. I didn't even need a steamer. A soaked rag, a scraper, and a heckalot of peeling worked mighty fine.


The next step will be replastering the walls. You see, the wall under the chair rails is textured plaster, and the top half is smooth. And after that's done, I can finally paint. Woop-dee-doo.


And now, I can do my bathroom business without my mind wandering down little pastel village pathways. How depressing.



My bedroom was next. And let me tell you, this wallpaper job was the best in the whole house *note the heavy sarcasm. The bottom third was a textured, dark forest green, while the rest comprised of all manner of pink roses set against a creamy background. It seemed like someone's bad attempt at an indoor garden atmosphere.

I love when little brothers help. Here we are, starting in on the first wall of removing the back cover of the previously peeled wallpaper. You can catch a glimpse of what the lovely stuff looked like in the top left corner.

First wall nearly finished....

And....totally done!

Still one long wall to go....And we have the same problem as we do in the bathroom with replastering. The other 2 wall in my room were not wallpapered, and therefore, have textured plaster. We'll have to smooth everything over before I can paint.


At least the hard part is done, right? ...Kinda?