Right now it's a dingy white with dingy white trim and doors. It's also a really big room, with 12 foot ceilings, and measuring 15 feet by 17 feet.
We figured that with the children gone to their father's for four entire days, we'd just get that sucker painted. Jon planned to do a little scraping, spackling, and priming the first day and then paint the room the second day.
Well, he started scraping and quickly discovered that covering the original plaster in the room was a layer of old, heavy wallpaper, covered by several layers of paint. Ack. So we decided he had better take down the worst of the wallpaper before beginning anything else.
To make a long story short, this job is becoming something that's going to take far longer than four days. There is special primer that's going to have to go over all the wallpaper that's left before we try to paint, and that's AFTER Jon removes all the bad parts and spackles, etc.
Having grown up in old houses that my parents restored over time, mostly by themselves, I was sort of expecting something like this. Jon has remained in amazingly good spirits. I'm doing my part by cleaning the rest of the house thoroughly, and I am looking forward to learning to paint when we get to that part.
Jon at work:
My attempts at putting up outdoor Christmas lights all by myself have thus far been, well, disastrous. I keep breaking bulbs and buying strings that don't work together and I fell off the &%$$% ladder, but I am determined that those lights will be up and TWINKLY when my children come home.
5 comments:
Oh, if only I had stuff to scrape off. My walls are made of some cheap wallboard. I seriously need the whole house re-drywalled. Good luck with your big project. I bet it will look wonderful when you're done.
Looks like a lot of plastering and sanding awaits. Just don't paint the room any colors that resemble turds.
Are you going to use a liquid stripper and a "paper tiger" or are you going to have to rent a steam press to get rid of the paper?
Sorry to hear you're having to go this route-
Old wallpaper is the pits to take down- it diesn't peel or pull off it comes off in postage stamp size pieces.
I hope that once the old paper is down, the plaster will look great and you can get on with the painting!
I'm so sorry for you. We had to do this and it is NOT FUN. Just go ahead and move all your stuff out of that room before you go any further, or you will be finding little pieces of plaster and fine dust everywhere. Sleep somewhere else till it's done. At least cover up your stuff with plastic each day if you can't move out. I've found I stay saner if I cover up the floor with plastic before scraping.
I live in an old house too and I have come to hate home improvement. My next house will be a 3-bedroom brick rancher!
We have a 1940's house and when we purchased it 3 years ago we had wallpaper in 3 rooms. I was trying to get pregnant at the time so we put mud over the walls.
Please be careful since your house may have lead. You probably already know this can harm a fetus and you can get a blood test done at your obgyn. I know so much to worry about!!
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