Reno: The Week the Wallpaper Ate

So after I wrote last we hit a brick wall on work on the house.  Or more like a quadruple hurdle.  I threw out my back and so was only minimally helpful for days on end (as in I spent one entire day lying on the sofa bed mattress on the floor while Joe removed wallpaper), my dad wasn't able to come up as planned this week because he's been sick, the wallpaper was more time-intensive than we had thought, and we had a lot of days without daycare (and holding Elizabeth is harder on my back than working on the house, so I couldn't even take over that).  Put it all together and in the 6 days following that post we did a grand total of get wallpaper off the bedroom walls and prime one wall.  Yes, one wall.  We had initially thought we'd strip all the wallpaper in the whole house before we moved in.  Yeah, that was funny.  But the bedrooms are done.  And my mom arrived Monday evening and is staying for almost 2 weeks to help.  We still plan to do the kitchen and bathrooms later this summer because they are small real estate and won't have furniture in them.  And the hallway, living room, and dining room wallpaper will just have to wait, probably until next summer. 

The wallpaper came off in those big strips on the rest of Elizabeth's room and our room.  But what I hadn't realized yet when I wrote the last post was that after we got the wallpaper off we still had tons more work to do.  First we went over every inch of each wall with vinegar/water and a putty knife, scraping off glue.  And in some places we went over an area multiple times to get the glue.  And then we thought we were done, but when we started washing the walls with TSP to prep them for painting we realized that there was still glue residue on a lot of the walls and so did another round of scraping every inch while washing with TSP.  And that was just to get to the point of taping, which always takes hours longer than it seems it should.

And then we started on Nicholas' room.  And things got even more discouraging.  Our magic process failed.  Joe and my mom tried all sorts of combinations but could only get the top layer off with the dif and then had to use vinegar/water and spend hours hacking at the bottom two brown paper layers to get them off.  And even with all that work, this was what they had accomplished after hours of work:

From 2014 June

At this point we rented a steamer to do the rest of Nicholas' walls.

From 2014 June

And thankfully it worked because that was our Hail Mary pass.  If that hadn't worked, I don't know what the next option would have been. Joe spent probably about 5 hours on it and my mom spent another 1, but they got the room done.

From 2014 June

Tomorrow we (okay, Joe and my mom because painting seems easier on my back than scraping) will start on the process of scraping glue so there is still a lot to be done, but at least the wallpaper is off.

BUT we have now started painting Elizabeth's room and our room and so the progress has picked up remarkably. Yesterday late afternoon we were finally ready to paint so we picked Nicholas up from school early so he could help.  When I asked him at the very beginning of this project what parts he most wanted to help with he listed pulling up the carpet (check) and painting both kids' rooms.  So he helped do the first coat of paint on one wall of Elizabeth's room.  (And then got distracted and went into his room to watch Joe steam off the wallpaper.)

From 2014 June

From 2014 June

Today I had a conference in the morning and Elizabeth didn't have daycare so needed someone to stay with her but even with only Joe at the house until 2:30 and then my mom and I there for about 2 hours in the afternoon we got 8 walls painted!  So the 3 light colored walls in Elizabeth's room have had both coats and so assuming we don't see any major missed spots when we go in tomorrow morning, are done.  And the 3 light colored walls in our room have their first coat.

So, anyway, we are making progress but more slowly than we had hoped and have had to scale back our expectations for what will be done before we move in.  We'll then have enough projects left to occupy us for years.

But Elizabeth has a purple room!