My next house won’t have any wallpaper. We are redecorating our downstairs bathroom, and so step one is to strip the wallpaper, then paint the walls, then put up wainscotting, then put up crown molding, and then do a final spiff. The room is not even five feet square, so how long can it take? I took yesterday off to work on it, and I’m still on step one – yep, once again I’m stripping wallpaper and hating every minute of it. There is a new wrinkle this time; when they put the wallpaper up, they put up an underlayer of what resembles superthick dryer sheets. It doesn’t come off in one pull – no, it come off in a minimum of two layers – sometimes more. In a couple of spots I’ve been reduced to scraping off a thick layer of paste with some fiber still embedded.
Given how busy this time of year is, it may not have been the best time to tackle this sort of project. However, we have a neighboorhood tradition of a progressive Christmas party (between Christmas and New Years so people are somewhat relaxed) and what with our new annex and updated master bathroom, we’ll be a stop along the way. So we wanted to put the icing on the cake by redoing the downstairs bath. Ambition goeth before the late night cursing.
