Hard at It

Yes, it's the middle of the night.  Yes, I'm sitting here making a blog post.  But yes, I'm also waiting for the wallpaper remover to work so I can keep on stripping the old beige-with-pink-roses wallpaper off my dining room walls.

I've never been big on making New Year's "resolutions."  Ambitions for the new year have always been more my style.  But this year I think my ambition to get my dining room wallpaper stripped had better be reinforced by the resolution to get it done before the end of this month.

And there's no reason I shouldn't get it done, provided I ignore my initial intention to get the stairhall trimwork all cut, shellacked, and installed first.  All those copes and mitres can take a long time . . . while wallpaper comes off in nice, big, satisfying strips.

Started the job last Saturday night, and got the old paper on the southeast corner and the strip over the portal to the living room taken down.

Working on the west window wall now.

I'm finding more than a little irony in the fact that since last spring I've been assigned to the Home Décor department at the Big Blue Box Store.  And every so often I'm called on to sell people the wallpaper scorer and the pre-mixed stripper fluid we carry.  But neither is so cheap or works so well as the hot water, vinegar, and dishwashing liquid stripper I mix up as needed or as the Hohlenpoker I learned to make from Jim Parodi's website.

No. 1 rule:  Do not kneel on der Hohlenpoker

Before I came across his tip I was afraid I'd have to invest in some expensive machine or exotic chemical or other to get the paper off the drywall the previous owners two back clapped onto the wall between the dining room and kitchen.  But as it turned out last week, all I have to do is roll the Poker over the wall, spritz on the vinegar solution, wait a few minutes, and with a little help from the 5-in-1 and the wallpaper scraper, off it comes. And if the drywall yields well to wallpaper removal, the plaster gives it up more easily still.

In the process of getting the paper off the plaster, I'm noticing that there's a layer of dark gold under the primer.  So apparently the dining room was glazed or tinted (not painted) gold, just as the living room was.

How far will I get tonight?  Depends on how fast I work and how willing I am to move the miscellaneous tools, equipment, and furniture that's in the way of the north and east walls.  Little things can make big roadblocks . . . or turn out to be no hindrance at all.