We’ve been waiting for a 3-day weekend since November so we can finally paint the front entry way, stairwell, and upstairs hallway.  It’s all going to be the same color (no, not green!), so we wanted to tackle the whole thing at once.  Long, long ago we primed most of the area, with my parents’ help.  Long, long ago, we taped off the floor molding and scraped off a little bit of peeling wallpaper (stopping about an inch above the molding).  Long, long ago we washed the walls.  Then, the floors were sanded and the walls needed to be re-washed, putting another task in front of the already daunting painting project.

So, finally Presidents’ Day weekend came and we were ready.  We spent the week assessing our equipment, ensuring that we had enough primer and paint, and making a plan.  Saturday morning, we got up and started the final prep work.  Frank patched long cracks that had emerged since we last worked on the walls.  And I spackled parts of the wall that had never been filled in and washed off the sawdust.  Then, all of a sudden, I looked up and saw Frank scraping away the wallpaper near the baseboard.  Evidently it had gotten loose farther up than where we had originally scraped.  But he kept scraping.  And kept scraping.  And suddenly, in one smooth motion, the putty knife and Frank’s arm had traveled up as high as he could reach — scraping off the wallpaper and paint in one clean 2″ wide stripe.  Uh oh.

So, he kept scraping, vowing that he’d stop as soon as the wallpaper seemed to be really solidly stuck.  But soon it was apparent that he needed to go all the way.  Now, we both saw a silver lining in this — there had been huge overlaps in the wallpaper, which left several seams that showed through the coats of paint.  We had tried sanding them out and patching them, to no avail — they were still going to be visible. So, at least this way those seams would disappear.  And it wouldn’t take too long.  Right?

Well, a short while later we noticed that there were actually 2 layers of wallpaper.  Now things started to make more sense.  This house was so solidly constructed that we thought it was very suspicious that some of the wallpaper pieces overlapped by nearly a foot.  It turns out that that was a shoddy job on top of a nearly perfect original wallpaper application.  Our faith in the original workers was restored.  We were shocked to see that we could make out a faint pattern in the original wallpaper.  Suddenly this daunting task became very exciting!

As Frank scraped, I started washing the wallpaper backing off the wall to expose the original wallpaper underneath.  I felt like I was uncovering ghosts as I worked, and revealing a piece of history.  It was actually quite fun.  (Yes, I did just write that.)  As I washed, whole sections of the pattern would emerge and the details were quite evident while the paper was wet.  We decided to preserve a small section, and the rest got scraped off.  So now the wall is down to bare plaster, which is pretty cool looking by itself.

But, as exciting as old wallpaper is, we did eventually tire of this project.  So, on Monday we went out and bought a new car.  Some people might just sit and watch TV or maybe go for a walk.  Us?  We bought a car.

As impulsive as this might sound, it was actually the result of a month-long shopping process.  We found out in early January that the Jetta was finally giving up the ghost.  The check engine light came on, indicating that the car needed all sorts of valves and filters and repairs — to the tune of $4,000 or so.  Plus the $1,400 for the air conditioner that we never fixed last year.  Plus the windows that didn’t go up and down any more.  Plus the numerous plastic parts that had broken off the interior and were lying around on the floor.  Since the car was only worth $3,500 (in perfect condition), and since its registration was due to expire in February and we didn’t think it would pass inspection, we had to say good bye — and fast!  We squeezed in several car shopping trips in January, and finally came home with a new Toyota Matrix on Monday.  We can haul a lot of wallpaper paste in the back of the new car. 

So, our front entry way is still a mix of green, white primer, and raw plaster.  And now the stairwell is raw plaster and old wallpaper.  And we have no idea when we’ll patch the walls (again) and prime (again) so we can paint (finally).  Maybe we’ll just try to find a reproduction of that original wallpaper and restore the hallway to its former glory.  (Probably not, though…) 

But at least we have a car I can drive!

You can see pictures of the wallpaper discovery process here, along with photos of the curtains we made at Christmas and our fireplace (just to break up the monotony, in case you don’t find old wallpaper as cool as we do).  Pictures of the car to come…