Last week, we began removing the wallpaper in the living room. It turned out there were two layers of paper on the walls but with the help of two wallpaper steamers, we were able to get it down no problemo. If you've never used a wallpaper steamer before (this was my first time), you put water in the canister and let it heat up. Once steam starts coming out, it's ready for use. Once the canister of water is empty, you'll have to refill it and wait for it to heat up again which can be 20-30 minutes.
Luckily, we had two steamers on hand so we were able to heat one up while using another. It worked out great.
Here's some before photos.
The wallpaper was a subtle brown stripe and the underlying wallpaper was maybe a blue damask? Hard to say. Interestingly, when we started steaming the removing the wallpaper, we could smell cigarette smoke which leads me to believe that the original owners (the blue damask wallpaper) were smokers and it's strange that the smell can stick around for that long!
My mom and I worked the steamers and the girls helped rip off the paper. Genevieve was the winner of the day with the biggest piece.
Eventually our living room was starting to resemble an old Italian villa, but not in a good way.
If I remember correctly, this was the part of the process when our fridge died. The room was in shambles and so--it seems--is my life. I felt at the height of discouragement. Now I have two rooms in shambles, Thankfully, we were able to borrow a couple of mini fridges from neighbors and keep rolling. All part of the process, I suppose.
There are parts of the wall that were too small for the steamer so I mixed one part of liquid fabric softener with 2 parts water in a spray bottle to loosen the paper. A small putty knife was handy to get in those small spaces. Bonus--it made the room smell amazing!
On day two, we (and by we I mean my mom) sanded the walls to get the remaining glue and small pieces. I caulked the trim using this caulk and I'll report back on how it performs. I used a different caulk in our other house and it kept cracking, which is terribly annoying.
After caulking, we started priming the wood trim. The trim in this room was not in good condition and the room is already dark with no central light fixtures. I wanted to start fresh in here.
I used this brush to paint the sashes of the windows and it saved my sanity. It's small enough to paint tight spaces without taping if you have a steady hand.
We put one coat of wall paint on and one coat of primer on and that's where I left it for a couple of days. Today, I hope to muster the energy to begin painting the trim.
This is what it looks like today and it gives me a lot of hope:
