Some Weird Stuff and Progress

First, the weird stuff. This afternoon, I worked on the scraping. You know how I love to scrape wallpaper. And as I scraped, some weirder-than-the-usual-weird weird stuff came up. Not, like, rats-in-the-toilet weird, but just kind of off.

For example, in the corner behind the door, multiple generations of occupants had gotten to the door molding and just sort of wallpapered over it a bit. Because they got a little carried away and they had that extra paper, so they decided to go for it? Who knows. I decided to end this tradition, but now I will have to clean up that section of the trim.

And here we have a classic move by the previous occupants. What do you do when a massive earthquake causes cracks in your walls that extend through multiple layers of wallpaper and paint? Well, just staple the paper into the plaster and hope for the best. Don't bother scraping down and repairing the plaster. That's for suckers. (By the way, there was so much paper on the walls that the staples didn't reach the plaster.)

On the other hand, this beats the back bedroom, where they just sort of taped it back in place.

Another type of wallpaper uncovered in the scraping. I kind of like this one, because it's lively. It's a very thin paper, though, so I'm glad it was put on over a heavy paper that's decayed a lot; that makes it easier to get off.

And to answer an e-mail from a couple of weeks ago about how we handle the dogs during all this work:

The dogs mostly sleep through the work, and for the most part they do it in another room, by their own choice. Goldie is a bit more of a momma's dog and likes to curl up around the base of the ladder, but she's pretty sensible about when that's not a great idea. As you can see in that very very pink photo, most of the stuff coming from the sky this afternoon was pretty benign. If you have dogs who cannot figure out for themselves how to get out of the way when dangerous things are happening, I suggest a puppy gate or other detention device to keep them out of the work area.

Here's where I called it a day around 6pm. I've done all the dry scraping I can reach with the panels not yet moved (I need a second person to help me maneuver them around the boxes in the hallway and down the stairs without punching another hole in the hallway plaster). Tomorrow: remove the panels and start the wet scraping with the wallpaper paste dissolver.

Technorati Tags: dogs, renovations, wallpaper

posted by ayse on 12/14/07