Remember way back when, before we moved into the house, where we chose paint colors for our dining room and my office? At the time, we planned to paint as soon as we moved in.
I laugh now at the thought. As soon as we were in the house, we realized there were lots of other things that needed to be done first, like getting the garden established, putting in the pantries, protecting the back deck and cleaning the long-neglected gutters. By the time that was done, it was summer and we decided to finish up our other outdoor projects while the weather was nice. So we fixed up the front porch. While Dan cleaned up the garage, established a workshop and sealed our house off from bats, I tended the garden and canned and froze bushels of produce for winter.
Last week, we decided it was time to tackle painting the office. We thought it would be nice to get it done while it was still warm enough to open the windows and air out the paint fumes. We picked up a few paint samples (neither of which was the right color, but I think we’ve landed on one now).
I don’t remember the thought process, but when we got home from Sherwin-Williams, Dan decided to peel up a corner of the wallpaper to see how difficult it would be to re-do the dining room walls. We were worried that we’d have to spray a solution on the wallpaper to get it off the walls, which would also require us to mask off the extensive wood work in the room.
But the corner pulled off relatively easily, and after a phone call with his brother (who is also a new home-owner and recently dealt with removing wallpaper in his own house), decided to keep peeling the wallpaper behind the pantries. We figured that it would really show how difficult it would be to re-do the entire room, but if we decided not to go ahead with the project right now, the pantries would hide the partially-peeled walls until we were ready to start.
The next thing we knew, the walls over the room looked like this:
Underneath the wallpaper, we found what is quite possibly the ugliest green paint I have ever seen, on top of an equally-ugly tan paint. (Don’t worry, this time the paint wasn’t lead-based!)
Did I mention that we’re hosting Thanksgiving this year? Scraped up walls do not make for a beautiful holiday dinner setting. So it looks like we’ll be spending the next weeks scraping, sanding and painting.
And hopefully we’ll get to painting the office, as well. Because there are already multiple color-test squares painted on the walls…
I feel like this is quintessentially what living in an old house is all about. You start out thinking you’re embarking on a relatively easy, almost fun project and BAM, you’ve uncovered something complicated, annoying and time-intensive.
At least you’re painting, I haven’t painted and have NOTHING on the walls. They need sanding…and we’re hosting Christmas!
AHHH!!!!
At least the paint underneath wasn’t lead-based! That would have been a HUGE project…
From what I’ve read, the painting itself doesn’t take long unless you need to mask off a bunch of wood work or something. So there’s that.
What a project you have taken on! I am looking forward to hearing more about this great adventure of yours. I need to paint almost every room in my house but have never painted before. At least I don’t have wallpaper to contend with!
Good luck with your dining room and please keep us posted!
My heart dropped when I read you were hosting Thanksgiving! LOL You’ve got your work cut out for you but you know it’ll look wonderful when it’s done!
Aww, I’m glad I got to see your beautifully wallpapered walls before you guys go and ruin them with a tasteful painting job