De-Wallpapering....Good Times, Good Times....

I bought my house back in 2007 knowing I would be removing wall paper from a few rooms. I already changed the upstairs bathroom by removing the wallpaper and then adding paint. Then I repainted three other rooms including two bedrooms and the basement. I've been dreading, more than you can imagine, removing the wallpaper in my master bedroom. There are vaulted ceilings and floor to ceiling wallpaper. Country blue background with little multi-colored flowers all over! I have never been one for wall paper. So I couldn't fathom just what the person that picked out the pattern was thinking! It's awful!

Well, I broke down and decided to get it done this weekend when it was a little chilly. Why not? Fix it up before Christmas and make it look nice before my family arrives for the Holidays. I recruited a couple of my friends (that had told me a long time ago that they would help in the massive job) to come over today and Monday. One of them has a steamer and had found that it works better than any wall paper remover or tiger claw that I had used in the past. Once the outer layer of paper is peeled away, the steamer will loosen the adhesive behind the back layer. It then will come off with a scraper like soggy tissue paper. I have to say, once I got started with it, I didn't really want to stop until the last of the wallpaper was gone!

But it seems that all jobs come with a cost. Poor Tina took a spill off my six foot ladder. She hasn't had the best luck with ladders this year. She had been on a ladder in her own home this past summer and was doing the same type of work when she fell from that one as well.

Well this time, I was on an extension ladder and Trisa was standing on the floor. We had just been talking about the fact that Tina had been feeling a little unbalanced. So I mentioned that she should be banned from ladders. Not five minutes later, literally, we turned at the sound of Tina falling, just in time to watch in disbelief as she fell flat on her back. The ladder went one direction and Tina fell the opposite direction. Her head bounced off the carpeted floor and the ladder ended up getting a bent leg from falling over my nightstand. The nightstand was demolished with the exception of the two drawers. The steamer went flying but miraculously landed on it's bottom without spilling a drop of water. My glass lamp hit the floor without so much as a scratch. However, the frame of the lamp shade did get bent a little so now the shade sits askew over the bulb. My clock took a hit and no longer has a full display of numbers. Tina ended up with bruises on her butt and backs of her legs. She had a cut on her left buttocks and had a very sore neck from her head bouncing around. With Tina refusing medical aide, we took a break for lunch and also to go buy another ladder. The one she had been on was out of commission. So if you notice below, the two different color ladders, now you know why!

This is just two of the walls that are covered!

This is a closeup of the wallpaper. Ish.... country blue.

Here it shows a little progress being made in removing it.

More progress.

After the other two girls left for the day, I continued to work until that night. I had about half of the room left. I knew I could finish it the next day. So once it's done, the next step will be to decide on a paint color. I know for a fact it won't be country blue!! Stay tuned!