Stephanie Leary

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The wallpaper must die

June 21, 2004 Stephanie Leary

Day 1

Supplies: scrapers, spray bottle, bottle of wallpaper stripper concentrate that has to be diluted in hot water. Discover lack of hot water. Opt to fill spray bottle with water instead and proceed as seen on Designed to Sell.

Spray.
Peel.

Scrape.

Peel.

Spray.

Peel.

Scrape.

Spray.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Scrape.

On the way home, I found myself wondering how much water you’d have to spray on the asphalt before it would peel up like the wallpaper.

Day 2

Climb on top of kitchen cabinets and hang on for life.
Spray.

Peel. Stuff comes off in long sheets up here; peeeeeeeeeeeel.

Spray.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Resupply: drywall mud, different kind of scrapers. Taller stepladder. New blinds.

Tear down old blinds.
Spray wallpaper underneath blinds. scrapescrapescrape.

Move on to mud.

Glop.

Scrape.

Glop.

Scrape.

Glop—oops, on floor. oh well. scrapescrapescrape.

Scrape.

Discover small remnants of wallpaper stuck in corners.

Swear.

Spray.

Scrape.

More mud. scrapescrapescrape.

Friend begins sanding down dry parts of previously mudded walls. Friend and kitchen are soon covered in fine white powder.

Hose down friend.

Hook up new shop vac.

schloooooooop

No more white powder.

Realize that one cannot face climbing on top of the cabinets again and that the rest of the mudding can wait.

Prime area behind fridge.

Admire handiwork.

Go home.

Collapse.

House

Comments

  1. michael says

    June 21, 2004 at 10:50 am

    I had the oddest dream last night in which there was a lot of cocaine….

  2. Mark Norton says

    July 19, 2004 at 7:54 pm

    I can completely sympathize. Hopefully it was not foil covered wallpaper. I recently (April) had my own encounter with the home improvement process known as wallpaper removal. It probably doesn’t help now, but the DIF gel worked the best for me.

    I wrote a little something about it here because it was such a traumatic experience :) .

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