Moving in

Let me start this entry by giving you somewhat of a time line. The house hunt commenced in September, so we found and then began the purchase of our future B&B. This was successful and we closed on that home at the end of October.
We listed our existing home sometime near the end of October. Our home sold in January and we had a closing date for the end of February. This means we had a big old house that we knew was going to sit empty until we sold, which turned out to be 4 months. That being said we were not completely comfortable with this, add to that the insurance company was no more thrilled than we were, so what to do?

Fortunately for us we have amazing kids, and the youngest volunteered to stay in the house from December until the end of February when we would arrive. Now picture an old, empty house at night with only one person in it, I must say the creaks and groans were somewhat daunting even to a fearless 21 year old, but bless him he stuck with it.

So we loaded up our huge rented truck and made our way East. Moving in the winter is not something I would ever recommend to anyone. By the time we got all of our worldly goods into the house the temperature plummeted indoors and felt below freezing as the doors were open for so long, but in it all came to await placement another day, in fact the tricky part was deciding where to put everything in the interim as we would be under construction very soon.

Some pictures have been added to give you an idea of what lay ahead for us, I can hear you gasping from here, but not to worry, there is light at the end of the tunnel or so I have been told.

Ok, so just to be clear, I have nothing against wallpaper as you will see in future posts, however there comes a time in history when we just need to say good bye to the old and embrace the new. Embracing the new involved hour upon hour of paper stripping making me somewhat of an expert. Being a self proclaimed expert I will pass along to you what worked for me.

There are many products out there designed to remove paper, from chemical peelers to steamers to scoring tools. I did try some of the chemical solutions added to water and frankly found no difference to just using water. In fact unless you are prepared to get down and dirty with this job, then abdicate and allow someone else the pleasure. A bucket and a good sized sponge did the trick and in my opinion is the only effective way to tackle this job, yes the water does run down your arm and into your armpit but you will get used to it after a few hours. Let the wall soak for a few minutes and the paper will just peel or scrape off, if there are multiple layers obviously this takes longer, but in some cases the top layers are dry and brittle and will peel off dry leaving you the final layer to soak and scrape. A word of warning about the scoring tools, these are designed to leave a porous finish to the paper so the water will soak in better, however they can also leave grooves and dammage the walls. We were dealing with plaster walls so I would never recommend on this surface simply to soft and you will need to plaster over the grooves caused by the tool, not worth it in my opinion. This tool needs to have just the right ammount of pressure put to it in order not to press to deeply against the wall.

Once you have removed the paper there will be residue left, kind of a gummy stickyness which is just old glue. If you are painting the previously papered walls you will need to wash the walls down. I used TSP powder added to water and it worked beautifully, it is hard on the hands so I suggest rubber gloves for this job. ( I didn't use them, but that's just me)It is probably a good idea to clean the walls even if you are going to re-paper, a good clean surface is much better for hanging new paper.