Early January is a good time to do little house projects; the holidays are over, but we're not full swing into the semester yet. This past week I tackled our downstairs half-bath, which came with some unfortunate wallpaper when we bought the house. One thing I want to note for the record? No matter how great the chemicals are, no matter that it's a very small room, stripping wallpaper stinks. It just does. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. We have another wallpapery bathroom to do, but I think it will take us a while to get up the gumption. Gotta let the pain of this one wear off first.
The room was papered in one layer - a, um, lovely pattern with a blue background and showy yellow and green flowers. Blech! Behind that was not-too-terrible baby blue paint. But as I wrestled off the paper behind the toilet, I made a little discovery: remnants of yet another layer of wallpaper that looks to have preceded the blue paint (sample above). Two things struck me. First, this older layer looks quite a lot like the newer layer I'm stripping off, which may say something about the cycles of wallpaper fashion. Second, we are the fourth owners of our house. The new paint we put on will be, as far as I can tell, the fourth different thing that has been on the walls. While I can't be certain, it's a pretty good bet that every single owner of the house has felt compelled to put their mark on that tiny half-bath. Too bad it had to be with wallpaper.
Try 10 layers! Actually, it wasn't that bad as it stripped off old plastered walls like wallboard. But the fun part was discovering a border at the bottom of Kewpies - Kewpie dolls were popular in the early 1900s.
Posted by: ncf | 12 January 2009 at 06:24 AM
Ugh, those stories send shivers up my spine whenever I hear them! You should have kept the kewpies!
Posted by: caraf | 14 January 2009 at 12:00 PM