Decorate Responsibly

To any person, professional or otherwise, who may choose to do interior decorating:

Use wallpaper with good sense.
Wallpaper can be a quick (if you know how to hang it) way to decorate a room. It may add a pop to a bland space, or perhaps some texture to a wall. It can be a lovely accent around the room. But, please, be responsible in your decorating.

If there is any chance at all that you may get tired of the wall paper, think before you hang it. If you might decide to move out or die before the wallpaper has served its sentence on your walls, think before you hang it. If that wallpaper is just so quirky that only you could love it, think of the people who will one day move into your residence after you have moved out of it. Will they love it, too? Or will it be the bane of their existence?

If you did decide to go ahead and hang that wallpaper, no matter how awesome and shiny that textured wallpaper may be, realize that you may tire of it. Fast forward your life. Suddenly, the teenage kid who really, really needed that wallpaper has moved on. How do we fix this? We have walls marred with your decorating choice. What's that? Paint over it, you say? Easy. No messing with glue removal, no priming the walls, just slap a coat of your favorite grey tinted white paint and you are all done. Now you have painted walls with a nifty design in them! WOW, what a great deal! Who knew that textured wallpaper could serve such a purpose? Your friends and coworkers will be amazed at how easy it was to fix it!

Ahem. Are you kidding me? There is a much better way. I have a friend who told me that the easiest way to remove wallpaper is to spray it with vinegar. The wallpaper practically falls off. Unless, of course you PAINTED it first! Then, of course the vinegar cannot penetrate the paint layer, thus leaving you to tear it all down by hand and THEN scrape off the backing that remains. Don't forget to spray it with the vinegar. It helps eliminate the leftover scraps on the walls.

One more thing.
If you have hung a lovely wallpaper border around the top of your walls, and then later decide to change the wall color, while leaving the border hung, mask it off. If you are afraid that painters tape will later tear the border when you remove the tape, then use a putty knife or other straight edge to cover the border when you paint up to the paper. You will then have less chance of leaving the old wall color showing and also leave the paper unpainted. If, however, the border is slightly peeling at the seams or top/bottom edges, it is time to remove it (using vinegar) before you paint. Then you may purchase a new border to apply after the paint has dried--you may even use the same one!

These tips may help you enjoy the time you have with your wallpaper. You won't look at it and wish that there weren't paint blotches all over the border. You will be happy with they way that awesome textured wallpaper looks as it drifts to the floor before you repaint the room. And it will ensure that the future residents of your current home aren't spending hours (4) peeling and scraping off your mistakes. Wallpaper can be a good thing if used responsibly. But it can also be a nightmare if it is not. Thank you.

When the Walls Talk

My family recently began a basement renovation. Our bathroom there was seriously a closet. The sink was a very old and stained wall mounted fixture, much like one you can find in a public restroom. You could wash your hands in said sink while still seated on the toilet. The shower stall was made of some sort of metal (not kidding) that had been painted on the INSIDE. When we first moved in our home and began using the shower, the paint began to peel. The peeling paint revealed multiple layers of paint, and I'd like to understand WHY a person would be compelled to paint their shower. Especially with paint that is obviously not meant to be used inside a functioning shower. We promptly finished the shower in our upstairs bathroom (previously just a bathtub) and abandoned the monster in the basement.

In addition to the tiny/non-functional bathroom, our family room was quite cramped and there were some heating issues (read- "no heat in the basement") which lead us to hang blankets over doorways and using a space heater to try and keep warm during our time spent down there.

My father-in-law saw the issues we had in our basement. Sensing that it was time to make some changes for the better, he generously volunteered to do the renovation. He drew up some plans, which included moving some walls, enlarging the family room and bathroom (and in so doing, enlarging a bedroom), and fixing the heating issues.

The first step in doing such a project would be to gut the place. Take down the existing walls (which, by the way, contained ZERO insulation) and get rid of the fixtures that simply would not serve adequate for my family. Tear down found us some very interesting things. Want to know what? I know you do.

Within the walls and ceiling were several things that we couldn't quite figure out. The walls in our basement were certainly trying to tell us something. What exactly they'd like to say, however, I'm still not quite sure of.

We found a bottle of Brandy, a pair of antlers (six point deer, I believe), a speaker from the drive-in movie theater, a roasting skewer, and a "No Parking" sign. All inside the walls and ceiling! Why? My husband believes the speaker was hidden in the ceiling because a kid who lived here stole it and then couldn't display it proudly without getting in trouble. But the Brandy in the wall? How would you get back to it? It was sheet-rocked in! The "No Parking" sign is a real one (I can't find it to take a pic, though), but it has never been hung on a street post (no tool markings). There was also a coffee can (the picture of which I cannot find) that was retro-fitted to create part of a heating duct. No wonder we had heating problems. They were trying to make coffee with the heater!

So, I'm not sure what kind of story my house is trying to tell me. But it sure was interesting, nonetheless! If you have a story that could link up all the hidden junk we found, feel free to leave me a comment and share what you think.