Start your new life by removing old wallpaper

On July 1, Aaron and I spent the first night in our new house. We’ve been working on it since Aaron got back from Paraguay from his second bug safari (as only I call it.) The day after we closed on the house he left the country, so there was no time to start the DIY process. Despite being born to parents who love to fix up a house, I am the last person to initiate a DIY experience: I will be part of the team, but if you leave it to me to lead, I will get overwhelmed quickly and run away. My last experience leading was in my first house, where after painting my cabinets before I moved in, I called in professionals to install my new flooring. When you’re not handy, nor naturally interested in the process, you lose steam fast. I do not have the stamina for home improvement to go it alone.

This time was different, as I am married to a man who has ALL THE TOOLS. And if he doesn’t have one, he will quickly size up the instruments needed and have said tool before I’ve located my painting clothes. Also, Aaron’s enthusiasm is unparalleled. Give that man a project, and he cannot be stopped. Sometimes I have to stop him because we’ve skipped dinner and I get grumpy when this happens and the reason is wallpaper removal.

Our homeowning journey began by getting out-bid for a completely redone house on a lake. Then I had to talk Aaron out of a major fixer-upper (as in needs a new roof, has mold AND termite damage.) But it was 500 square feet bigger than our current house and on deep water, as in you can drive your boat from your backyard TO THE OCEAN. Our hypothetical boat, sure, but the dream was hard to let go for my handy, dreamer husband. The neighborhood was not great, though, close enough to the interstate that you could hear the car noise from the front yard. There were too many negatives for me to volunteer to live in a construction zone.

Then we found it: A modest house on a canal in an idyllic neighborhood near the beach.

View from the backyard:

It’s a canal to nowhere, but it does count as waterfront property in the real estate listing. After the inspection revealed that our old (by Florida standards) 1958 house was in remarkable shape for its age, we realized this was our house. With only cosmetic changes facing us, I was much more at peace with this venture. “Let’s make it pretty” versus “let’s stop it from falling down” sounded much better to me.

Tropical Storm Debby threw us our first structural challenge after she peed on our guest room floor, as Aaron likes to describe it. After so many hard rains fell in a short period of time, some of it leaked into our house forming a sad little puddle. So that’s #1 on the to-do list before the rainy season delivers its next installment.

Battle wallpaper

One of the ugliest parts of the house was the bathroom. I’ve never seen wallpaper on a ceiling until this Mylar delight introduced itself. 

Brings new meaning to that phrase “look, something shiny!”

My first task was to remove this wallpaper to prep for painting. The shiny layer peeled off pretty easily, leaving behind the glue-y undercarriage that held fast to its squatter’s rights. After spending hours trying to scrape it off using water and a putty knife, we finally discovered this stripping gel that made everything go twice as fast. You spray it on really thick and let it soak in, then the paper peels right off. But I started getting spray cramps in my arm, so there was a price. Then we got the concentrate form which you mix with water into a garden sprayer and it goes on like butter. Now I was working at three times the speed, but in messy fashion: the gel drips everywhere: onto the floor, your face, your hair.

I finally got to the actual wall/ceiling:

Next stop was sanding the walls. Just to show you what a DIY idiot I am, I started dreading the laborious process of sanding…by hand…with sandpaper. Aaron then introduced me to the electric sander and that fascination with power tools men have? I GET IT. I felt like I was controlling a rocket that might launch at any moment if I didn’t carefully maneuver it to blast the rough edges off those walls. It was a little scary (as I had to balance on the edge of the tub or sink counter) but also invigorating. It was similar to when I took a self-defense class in college and the adrenaline led me to punch the padded man until my knuckles bled.

After a layer of primer, and three coats of white on the ceiling by Aaron, I painted the walls in the shade of “arctic stone,” which should be spoken with a British accent in my mind.  This was my first attempt at painting anything other than white on white, so I was thrilled.

I’m sparing you the boring photos of white-on-white action (which we did a lot of, particularly doors and trim, and walls that we learned through sanding had hidden wallpaper underneath. We pretended not to notice that. Just keep painting. Just keep painting.)

Aaron cut glass to fit the medicine cabinet nook, which he is building shelves for and will eventually place a mirror-covered door over. I know the flash-in-the-mirror is irritating, but the lavatory is small, and I’m tired.

Next I took on our bedroom–we’ve decided to embrace SoFlo beach living an do it all the way. Bright colors are happening: lime sorbet for the master suite. And by master I mean minor, and by suite I mean efficiency. You know, quaint.

Our bedroom suffered from an unfortunate wallpaper border, which I eventually removed using the magic gel. This photo was taken in the frustration stage (before discovery of the magic gel.)

Here I am after Aaron made me face the camera while painting (I resist posed pictures, but the other action photos are either out of focus or ineligible due to my vanity.)

I know the paint looks yellow here, but I swear in person it looks green.

Our favorite part of this house is the view from our bedroom window. My first two years of teaching I lived on a river, and my bedroom faced the sunrise over the water every morning. It was one of the joys of my time living there, so this feels very full circle (yet much happier.) Here’s the final product after move-in (with minimal unpacking and whatever pillowcases we could find):

See it’s green when it dries, right? Also note the upgrade in blinds, which will be upgraded again (the ones behind the bed will become vertical also to filter more light on those days I don’t have rise at 6:00 am.)

Rising each morning takes courage for some of us. When faced with the laborious process of removing the wallpaper, it often seems too much. Easier to paint over it, to use a “hack” to find a way around it. Eventually this catches up with us, and we are faced with hours and hours of stripping ourselves down to raw. But by finding the tools to remove the often tacky masks we wear, we find our confidence. That shiny exterior we thought was fooling everyone was fooling no one. It was always too much; people were just being polite when they said it was “interesting.”

But it takes time to get to raw, and it happens one day at a time. Sometimes you thought you were painting over paint, but it turns out to be wallpaper. It’s okay. Take it one room at a time.