Wallpaper hell, day two. Or is it three?

We've turned the corner. All the prepping and taping is done and we're actually painting! Well, it's primer, but it's still paint.



I'm still working on the wallpaper adhesive, but that's where I've literally turned the corner - I'm on the last side of this nightmare!



You wouldn't believe how physically hard it is to get this stuff off. I couldn't help but take a moment to be thankful that I'm an American citizen with a desk job, and not some poor undocumented worker with no job options but manual labor. There must be people that do this sort of stuff eight hours a day. Seriously, if I didn't have beer, I couldn't have kept this up for four hours. I bet day laborers don't get gratis Miller Lite breaks.

The painting has to be done this week - we've got to start moving this weekend. . . which reminds me of a YouTube video that my friend (the guy who started the whole ANWR e-mail conversation) sent me - it's a Dunkin Donuts commercial about helping a friend.

The Nightmare Known as Border Paste

Remember how I was just amazed at how easy it was to remove the wall paper? Well, the glue stayed behind and I've used everything under the sun to get it off, including muscle power (that only resulted in gouged drywall) and tears (not effective).

Most suggestions end with Dif. And if it's not working, the suggestion is to leave it on longer. There have been suggestions about vinegar, laundry detergent and fabric softeners. Then I stumbled across a "technical data bulletin" from the makers of Diff, and it had this dispiriting news:

"Removal of wallpaper borders
Wallpaper borders are frequently installed with a special glue called "border adhesive" or "vinyl-to-vinyl adhesive". This glue is very similar to common white glue (Elmers® Glue) and cannot be removed with wallpaper removers including DIF Gel.

There is no easy way to remove borders installed with these glues. Try to peel off the decorative layer as mentioned earlier, and then start a long soaking process using one of the DIF Wallpaper Strippers. The white glue may soften with long soaking. Scrape off as much of the border and adhesive as possible using a Paper Scraper.

After scraping, sand off the remaining portion with 100 grit sandpaper. Expect some wall damage. Spot prime damaged areas with B-I-N® Spray Primer or GARDZ® Damaged Wallboard Sealer and patch with Ready Patch ® Spackle and sand smooth."

Greeeeeeeaat.

Full bulletin

Adventures in home remodeling

I've had my first remodeling injury.

Last night, as I was waiting for an electrician to come by to give me an estimate on installing the wiring for light over our breakfast bar, I decided to use the time wisely and paint some more moulding. I was crouched on the living room floor, stirring the paint. The phone rang.

Now, this is one of those times when everything happens very slowly. You don't want to miss the phone call - it's probably the electrician. But you don't want to leave a can of paint open, either. So I "carefully hurried" to close the can of paint and jumped up to run into the kitchen, where my phone was.

I had to go through the dining room. There's a light fixture in there. It's too low, even with a table underneath, as you can see the light bulb just walking by:

I ran directly into the glass "bowl" - with the bridge of my nose.

Blood everywhere, I called Kyle bawling. After rushing to my rescue with ice, he decided a couple stitches would probably be best. "Since you're a girl," he said. Apparently men like having permanent scarring.

Just driving by the emergency room made it clear we'd be there for several hours, and we found the closest urgent care clinic (or as Kyle calls them, "doc-in-box"). The very nice doctor took one look at me and decided it was the sort of injury that was "made for liquid stitches," due to the nice clean lines of the cut (glass will do that). We were in and out in under two hours - no wait.

They covered my eyes to protect them from the Dermabond. I insisted Kyle take a photo. "I'm going to blog about this," I announced to his and the physician's assistant's amusement. It was kinda funny by then. Good icing will do that.

Kyle set me up on the couch with a six pack of Miller Lite, an ice bag in a towel, some mashed potatoes and tomato soup (this same day the TMJ decided to go haywire - big fun!) , and headed back to work on the new house. See why I'm marrying him?

House progress on Flickr

For the truly curious, I've got all the photos taken so far on Flickr.

Remodeling Photos

Flower Photo: Morning Glory

There's a mass of azaleas that grow under a big oak tree that's near my building. In the mornings, you can often see one or two morning glories peeking out among the green azaleas (they bloom in early spring).

Floor samples AWOL, missing out and time's running out

I got a call from FedEx this morning - they needed to verify my address for a delivery. So that's where my flooring samples from Lumber Liquidators are . . . I had to leave a message with someone and I put new numbers on our mail box for good measure. It was missing three of the four numbers in our street address, so maybe that's why they couldn't find us?

Everybody has fun stuff going on in the month of July. Fun stuff they want to share with us. Fun stuff we've had to say "no" to because we're running out of time to work on the house before we have to move in completely.

1. Dear friends who live in New York are down for the weekend. "Come spend the weekend with us at our Orlando condo," they say. "Sorry, we can't . . ."

2. A close girlfriend has her family's beach house for the week. "Stop by next weekend - the weather should be great!" Again, "sorry . . ."

3. Coworkers finally have a get-together that involves cocktails and a (bad) movie. Me? I'm painting trimwork!

4. The band of a friend of our had their last concert last night - they're all moving to Austin. You already know what I was doing. Kyle? Mowing, edging, weeding in the front yard. For at least two hours.

Weekend One - House

This was our first weekend working on the house. Our friend John came down to help us. He's worked in construction, so he was able to give us some pointers, and he did some manly stuff with Kyle that I can't do.

Like tear down cabinets:



Note the big white wall of cabinetry hanging over the breakfast bar, blocking the kitchen view to the den.


Ta-da! John and Kyle had that thing down in the time it took me to run to Home Depot to not pick up new drawer pulls.

(Turns out our kitchen drawers have oddly-sized screw holes and I'd rather order pulls that fit than putty in the existing screw holes and drill new ones.)

They also hung cabinets in the garage (no photos), and much more, but this was pretty impressive - to me, at least.

What did I do? I tore down that hideous striped wall paper. All of it, including the huge panel behind the refrigerator. This would have been easy as the paper peeled right off. But (of course there's a "but") whoever put the wallpaper up then put moulding up - over the wallpaper. I'm not tearing perfectly good moulding down, so I had to slice the wallpaper off right under the moulding.

We also prepped the living and dining rooms for paint. This takes longer than you think it will, what with the dusting, cleaning the walls, taking down blinds, testing the colors, fixing the wavy chair rail (thanks John!), repairing the moulding (whoever put it up didn't caulk the seams where one piece of moulding gave way to the next!), painting the moulding. . . and so on. We worked all weekend, and there's only a test-sized patch of color on the wall.

Tomorrow: what we're missing out on