While Tyler was gone to Camp Granna, Russ and I decided to tackle the wallpaper in the playroom. I have HATED that grass cloth paper since we bought our home 4 years ago so this was the perfect time to get rid of it. It would've been hard to work on this while Tyler was in town since we use the playroom so much. I took off last Friday and spent 3 days straight working on stripping this paper. And Russ helped me a lot on Sunday. It was a bear to get off because it was 2 layers deep and some of the bottom layer was painted over. It took a lot of time with the steamer, the wallpaper scrapper and scrubbing with TSP, but the paper and glue eventually all came off! And Russ had to do quite a bit of mudding on the walls to get them smooth again. Some places will need a few more coats of mud and we haven't sanded it down yet, but I am very pleased with the end result. We had other projects on the list that we didn't get to since this took forever! Oh well. There are always projects and never enough time.
BEFORE pictures of the LOVELY grass cloth paper...
Mid-way through the project...check out the grass cloth AND the super-fun surprise layer of floral stripes!!
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| Such a HUGE mess!! |
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| It did tear up the drywall in several places, unfortunately. |
The mudded walls AFTER!!! What a difference! Sorry it looks yellow...I took these at night.
Sweet Caroline was so good the entire weekend. I stopped working of course to feed her, change her and put her down for naps, but the rest of the time she spent in the playroom with us while we worked. On Saturday night, we did take a break to go to church, eat dinner out and then made a trip to Lowes. Caroline was super good for all of it!! It was so nice to be a family of 3 again for a little bit and for Caroline to get more attention. At one point during the weekend, Russ asked me if I thought she knew she was the only child because he thought she was hamming it up a little more than normal. Ha!
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| Waking up from a nap... |
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| No pictures, Mommy... |
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| We got the jumper down from the attic. She hasn't figured out how to jump but she likes sitting in it ok. |
We finished getting all of the paper off except for a small section above the window, so I decided to tackle it Tuesday night before Russ and Tyler came home. Well, my hand slipped and the scrapper nicked my left thumb giving me a really deep cut. Blood everywhere! I was home alone with Caroline (who was napping in the swing), but luckily my brother was in the area so he came over to watch her so I could go to the Minor Med. 3 stitches, a tetanus shot and an hour later, I was back at home. The Methodist Minor Med was great - they were super fast and nice, even though I was a big baby. I was scared and had never had stitches before!! I am also taking an antibiotic to help against infection and I have to go back in 10 days to have them take the stitches out. Warning...gross pictures ahead...
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| Right after I cut it. |
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| The morning after...3 stitches! |
Needless to say, I did NOT finish the stripping the paper. Russ actually finished getting it off last night and he hopes to finish cleaning and prepping the walls for paint this weekend. I am SO ready to be done with this project!! I think we are going to hire out the painting of the the built-ins and trim (since they need to be painted with oil-based paint), the walls and ceiling. It will be a LONG time before I want to tackle the dining room paper!!!
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