in mid-january we started working on my office.
(left) we laid down protective paper and plastic. one of the disadvantages to having the floors done “out of sequence” because now we have to strip the wallpaper in the office and worry about damaging the floors with all the water! (right) i don’t know what mathew is doing here, probably taping the heating vent so it doesn’t leak. but i thought it was a funny photo…
mathew adding electrical outlets throughout the room. as always this means making holes in the walls!
…and drilling down to the garage so the wiring has somewhere to go. this always freaks me out but mathew seems to know what he’s doing. (right) while he was downstairs in the garage, i was laying down plastic and heard a noise coming from the hole he just made in the baseboard. i was surprised to see this: a drill coming up from downstairs! looks like he was right on target.
(left) i’m always curious to know what the house looked like in 1914. here’s some bright green wallpaper. can’t imagine this covering the entire room. the previous owners were bold with their design choices! (right) the wallpaper and paint in this corner was loose and couldn’t wait to come off the wall. there are some cracks here and water damage is the reason the wallpaper no longer sticks to the plaster.
we rented a wallpaper steamer and the next day we started attacking the walls. we thought it would be a quick and easy project because it was a living room and not a kitchen, so the walls weren’t coated in grease. the coverings should just slide off, right? WRONG. assuming something will be easy, is always our first mistake! it was slow-going (right) and the plastic we taped onto the baseboards wasn’t doing its job. water was getting trapped under the plastic!
(left) on this wall we discovered a completely different original wallpaper: pink and green floral on white. (right) here are i am scraping at the paint, in the hope that the wallpaper would be easier to steam without it in the way. not so much…
it was a long and tiring night. and we still aren’t done with removing the wall paper. do you understand why it’s taken me so long to make a blog post? (right) on a brighter note: mathew finished the shelves for the built-in hall cabinet. popo wasted no time moving her trinkets onto the shelves, of which i don’t have a photo. i guess i’m not a fan of the trinkets… but it’s her space, not ours and we want her to be happy.