Kitchen Done

I finally have everything done in the kitchen that is going to be done for now. Eventually, when I get some other stuff paid off I want to redo the cupboards and stuff in here, but I like how it is. I am still working on before and after pictures, but here is a preview. I posted this picture of the retro clock that hangs above my kitchen sink:



And here is what that area looked like before. Basically it was a nightmare. The first layer of wallpaper came off easily, but then there was another layer under that. I have had no luck removing the first layer of wallpaper in this house. So I went ahead and sanded it down as much as I could, sealed it and skim coated it, primed it, and painted it. You'd never know that there was paper still under there.


more to come... soon (i promise!)

Poodles, giraffes, roosters and elephants

It was a sad day at my house last week when my friend James and I started working on making part of the basement another bedroom. Sad because it meant I had to lose this AWESOME wallpaper. Lucky for me it was put up on boards that were attached to the wood wall behind it, so we were able to save a piece of it. It's in the garage now, I might just have to mount it out there.

I just wish I knew the story behind this. Dancing elephants, alcoholic giraffes, a slutty poodle and a rooster with a top hat and cane, all interspersed with giant cocktails. Who thought this would be a good idea for wallpaper? Who gave it the OK for production? Were there drugs involved? And who buys this stuff? So many questions. Here is my wallpaper in happier times.

More progress made, dining room completed!

Yay! Thanks to my awesome mom, the dining room has been wallpapered and is looking great. I couldn't be happier with the way it looks. Check it out. It's come a long way from this:




To this:

No more ugly wall!

I'm finally making some progress on the dining room. You might remember the before picture:



Since then I've repaired the plaster above the window, skim coated some of the bigger spots where the first layer of wallpaper actually came off, and painted over it with an oil based primer. All that's left is to prime and paint the trim, paint the window and put up the new wallpaper! Here's how it looks so far. Already a huge improvement.

Waving the white flag

So, while the bathroom waits to be finished I started to focus on the dining room, thinking it would be one of the easier rooms to get done. Thought I could strip down the wallpaper, slap some paint on it and be good to go. But as I learn through this process, nothing is ever easy. Here's how the wall looked when I started:


Here's what I found under that wallpaper:



Uh. Ok. For more of my nightmare, check out this picture.
The area above the window had to be filled in with plaster. I believe the green stuff is some ancient skim coating that was done before the original wallpaper was put up. Add to that a couple areas where some water damage from an old (now fixed) roof leak was fixed and the pink joint compound I've spread on to fix some areas where the original paper actually did come off, and this is one scary mofo picture!

Anyway, this wall is pretty much f'ed for paint, as I don't have the time or frankly the patience to do the amount of skimcoating that would have to be done to make this paintable. So, I guess I'm going to have to put more wallpaper up! I know I was so against it, I just don't think I have a choice here, if for nothing else, for the sake of my sanity! There is actually some pretty cool wallpaper out there, this is from a book called Simple Space, and here is what I've chosen.

I'm only going to re-paper the 2 walls that had it before, the others will be painted a color that I'll match from the paper. This brings me back to my original color scheme for the living room, black and white with lime green accents. I had switched to a purplish-gray accents, but since the living room really flows into the dining room and I couldn't find any paper that would have worked with that, I'm back to plan A.

Just say NO! to wallpaper!

This buying and owning a house thing is definitely a learning experience. The first lesson I've leaned is to not buy a house with wallpaper in it. Wallpaper can hide lots of things. That's not to say that it's been done on purpose, but that's always a possibility. My dreams of nice, paint-ready walls underneath the wallpaper were just that.

As for the bathroom, I've decided to call in a contractor to get an opinion. My neighborhood association has a list of contractors that they have "approved" or whatever so I'm going to start there. I am pretty sure that we are going to tear out the plaster and tile in the shower area, put up some special sheetrock and then I will re-tile it myself to try and save a little money. Hopefully this fix will be somewhat simple and effective. And hopefully this will be the only major thing that pops up as I prepare my house to move in!!

My first disaster

The first room I decided to tackle in the house was the bathroom. There is lots of wallpaper to be removed. Things were going fine as far as the walls were concerned. It was tedious work, but it was going. Then I got to the ceiling. In the shower. Yes, it was wallpapered. I noticed that a corner was unstuck already so I grabbed it and started to pull. A few pieces of plaster plunked down and I hope it was just damaged in that corner. I continued to pull and realized about half the ceiling was coming down with it. I thought about stopping but what would I do with a half on half off piece of ugly wallpaper in my shower? What was done was done and I had to keep going. Here are some pictures of the aftermath. I've put in a post on my go-to DIY messageboard to see about what I should be doing with this, and whether or not I can in fact DIM or if it's time to call in the professionals.