Tongue Tyed: Ms. Fix It Strikes Again

Apr 18, 2006

Ms. Fix It Strikes Again

Do you know how many calories you burn per hour for painting and plastering during home renovations? 367. Not too shabby...Particularly when you work for say, 6 hours a day on said renovations...A nice little 2200 calorie burn is always a good thing...

Oh yes, I am going somewhere with this, I promise.

This weekend, I undertook the big one. The project I have been talking about since I bought my house. The removal of the ugliest wallpaper I have ever lived with--scratch that...the pink wallpaper that used to be in my parents' house was worse...but this was pretty bad...

I hate wallpaper. It just causes problems. It is too specific, and too hard to change. So, I have now removed all of it from my home.

My master bathroom is a lovely room. It is a generous 10'x10' and has marble countertops and a marble garden tub, and huge mirror, but it also came with striped wallpaper, and those strip lights that remind me of a Vaudeville dressing room--but somehow, they don't capture the romance and charm of those lights.

In addition to the lovely forest green vertical stripes, was a floral border. FLORAL. Nothing in my life or personality could be described as floral. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that most of the border was held in place by clear thumbtacks that the previous owners had apparently deemed acceptable.

Would you like to see? I'll show you...This is a picture from the sellers' sheet from when I was looking at the house. This is how they had it decorated...I really should show you the rest of the pictures because apparently someone liked purple. The bedspread, couches and even the placemats were all purple...but that's another story...

See what I mean? Now just imagine that behind those purple towels is a tear in the wallpaper, and that the border is also loose...It's obviously a room with potential, no?

Sooo, Saturday, I decided to see if that border around the tub would come off. Sure enough, it came off beautifully, So I decided to try the ceiling one. It came off neatly in one long strip three quarters of the way around the room, then RRRIIIPPP...the wallpaper came with it...Ah, the deciding factor governing my weekend warrior chores...Since I had a gaping tear in the wallpaper, I decided it was time to go for it. I pulled down about 75% of the paper in a half hour, until all that was left was well-stuck wallpaper and thin backing. Then I went to Sherwin Williams for some primer and sealed the rest of the paper and leftover backing in, so I didn't have to remove it all. After that dried, I replastered the walls using the same technique I used in my guest bathroom, to texturize the walls (did I ever show you finished pictures of the bathroom?? It looks so good...I will do that soon...).

Sunday, I painted and hung new lights over the sink. It's looking good, and is almost done. The only problem I have had is the latex paint isn't sticking properly, and is peeling off in a rubbery way. Maybe I will take a picture of that...it's really strange. It is peeling off where I had taped and when I pull of the tape, the paint is coming off too. So I a lot of edge work to redo. But it definitely is showing its potential...

I love doing this stuff. It is such a visible accomplishment. And to top it off, I even taught myself how to install new lighting. And I did it correctly, and wasn't electricuted, and the lights even work!

posted by Ty @ 4/18/2006

1 Comments:

At 10:03 AM, April 20, 2006, Summer said...: The easy way to keep the paint from peeling when you pull the tape off is to use a utility blade to score lightly right at the edge of the tape. Kind of annoying but keeps you from having to touch up as much. It's also better not to leave the tape too long... If you take it off before the paint is completely dry, you'll have less rips.

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