Projects

Sorry for the implied bad language here, but I'm pretty sure that's what my cats were thinking about me the last couple days.

It all started with a printer.

Our cheapo printer died - because it was cheap.  My really nice printer/scanner/copier/fax was obsolete.  So as a combined Mother's Day/Father's Day gift, my mom got us a new printer/scanner/copier/fax.

Which meant I could FINALLY get around to doing a project I've wanted to do since I wrote this post last summer.  (A collection of the pictures my sister took on her honeymoon in Paris.)

I love how it turned out:

I hadn't fully decided where I was going to hang it, but I needed to get it hung somewhere.  My new kitty (have I mentioned the new kitty yet?  I need to do that) is really good at jumping up on counters and knocking things over.  I didn't want the glass to get broken.  So I hung it up over the lovely 80's plaid wallpaper in the dining room.  

The wallpaper the landlady told me I was more than welcome to take down.

The wallpaper that had a little torn spot.

Right by where I was hanging the picture.

The spot that I started picking at last night.

And didn't stop until I'd pulled all the wallpaper off the walls!

The before picture.  Don't mind the bare bulb hanging from the fan there.  It had a weird wicker basket looking shade that drove me crazy.  I'm going to be replacing it eventually.  But there is the lovely plaid wallpaper.

All I was peeling off was the front half of the wallpaper - the decorative part.  But it came off really easy!  What was left was the glue side of the paper that made the room look the walls had once been white, but 30 years of heavy smoking had yellowed it.

Blech.

I probably should have taken a mid-project picture at that point, but I didn't.

I was telling my mom about the remaining paper and my plans to remove it.  She said "No, no.  All you need is hot water in a squirt bottle and a plastic scraper."  So while the kids were outside playing, I went to work.

I worked one strip at a time, spraying hot water on the whole thing, then gave it a few minutes to soak in.  Then I started scraping and peeling.  It worked like magic!

The entire project from the time I worked on it last night plus today's work was only about an hour and a half!

And now it looks...

...worse than it did with even the yellowed paper.

Double blech.

But that's okay.  Some paint will fix that.  But I can't do that until I get my garden planted.  So we have to live with the weird multi-colored walls for a week or so.  We'll live.


Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go start digging my garden!