Project One (and the loss of ambition)

When we told our pediatrician that we were taking Bella on a roadtrip to Texas when she was just six weeks old, the pediatrician called us "ambitious." I've decided that was just a nice way of calling us "dumb." And when I think about our very first home improvement project, I can't decide whether "ambitious" or "dumb" would be a better adjective... Before we'd been in our house for even a week, I decided it was a good time to tackle Project One, the kitchen wallpaper. The thing is, neither Stephen nor I had ever stripped wallpaper before. In all of our of 14 homes, I have never even painted a wall, much less peeled the paper from it. Let's just say that next time, if I ever have to undertake a de-wallpapering project again, I will seriously consider hiring a professional instead doing the DIY route.



The first thing I said when I saw the kitchen wallpaper here was, "How could ANYONE live with this wallpaper?!" Our realtor, a HGTV-watching guru, heartily agreed, but she was eager to sell us a house, so she explained that you just spray this stuff on the walls and then peel it off. Sounded simple enough. It would be different if this was a larger, more ornate house, and if the year were something closer to 1992. Then, maybe, it would be okay. But it was truly gross wallpaper-- peeling all over the place, with grease stains that would NOT come off, grease stuck on parts of the paper that had peeled up, and it was just way too overpowering for a house this size and style. And it didn't match the linoleum, and certainly didn't match my dishes. While mom was here to help us move, she took one look at the wallpaper and mentioned it was going to be a "big job" and that they sell something you can use to stick it back ON to the walls in the places where it's peeling off. I'm thinking, Mom, we want to take it OFF the walls, and what do you know about peeling wallpaper, anyways?

Well. Had Stephen and I known how big of a job it was really going to be, we may have decided that we could, in fact, live with it. We were too naive to know what we were getting ourselves into, or else that wallpaper might have stayed there forever. But, in all of my ambition, I had decided this would be Project One, to get done before the fall semester began (because I wanted Stephen's help, and I knew that once the semester began, my honey-do list would fall completely off Stephen's radar). So one morning during our first week here, dear Stephen, armed with $4 worth of wallpaper-stripping paraphernalia, read the instructions on the packages and got right to stripping. This is what our kitchen wall looked like an hour and a half later:



This is when we decided to take a trip to Lowe's, as it was obvious that something wasn't working quite right. Well, the nice lady who manages the wallpaper section was quite pleasant and eager to help and full of know-how about how the whole wallpaper stripping process works. She first suggested we try using the wallpaper stripping steamer, on sale for $100. Then she proceeded to tell us how fabric softener supposedly worked on wallpaper as well. Then I asked her if she'd ever stripped wallpaper herself. She had not.

We left Lowe's armed with a wallpaper stripping kit, by the brand Piranha. Yes, "piranha" is exactly what we wanted to happen to that horrid wallpaper. The kit had a wonderful how-to dvd, which, incidentally, was made circa 1992. So Stephen, still eager to tackle Project One, got right to it once again. He found that the piranha method was NOT working on our particular wallpaper. But he did find his own method, which consisted of peeling off the top layer in whole sheets without spraying or scoring first, and there was a glorious half-hour in which he reveled in his wallpaper murdering skills. (My favorite quote from Project One: "I've always kind of hated wallpaper, but have never been able to destroy it like this!!" I think he released all the frustration that has built up from all the floral wallpaper he's been subjected to living with over the course of his life. It was therapeutic for him, really.)



Then he found that he could spray warm water on the remaining bottom layer, and peel. And peel and peel and peel. Sometimes, even the dry wall underneath joined in on the peeling party. But by the end of day, all the wallpaper was gone. We have been through about three rounds of spackling and sanding since, and there are still spots that need more spackling and sanding. In other words, it has been a month since we started, and this project is still not completed. But that's okay, because it will look as good as new once it receives a fresh coat of paint. Once I decide on a color of paint, that is. For now, we have white cabinets, against white walls, and white linoleum floors. The funny thing is, after all these years of renting places with white walls, I thought we would immediately be painting our own walls a non-white color. Maybe I have just run out of ambition, but we are actually REALLY enjoying the white on white on white look right now...