Finally!

Back in February we got our Nest ("smart" thermostat).  When I had painted the dining room, I had painted around the old thermostat.  It was much bigger than the Nest, so when Steve installed it, there was a section of old paint and wallpaper showing.

He had asked me to paint it back when he installed it, but I kept forgetting.  It's located on a wall in our dining room, that I wouldn't see until the end of the day.  Then the next day I'd forget to do it.  Ha.  Then Bean has become more needy and needs more attention, so I just put on the back burner for a project to be done when Steve is home.  A vicious cycle of forgetting and 8 months later, I've finally gotten to it!

My mom popped in for a couple days (pretty much to babysit Bean while I went to the dentist) and I was able to take advantage of her being here to focus on this project!  It took an entire day from start to finish, but now you'd never know a different thermostat used to be there!

(The thermostat is located on the inner wall of the dining room that faces the foyer/stairs.  It is so easy to whip around the corner and not see it - at least that's my excuse for forgetting to fix it!)

(The room was originally wallpapered, of course! I am not about to undertake another wallpaper removal, plus, I had already painted over it when I did the dining room.  It's hard to tell, but there was a lot of textural differences between the green paint I did and what was behind the thermostat.)

(First I popped off the outer part of the Nest - oh and turned off the power to the wires!  Then I unscrewed the back part, taped it up - and put a piece of cardboard inside the tape to prevent dust getting into the wires.)

(Same as previous picture - just a little more focused showing the different layers.  I took a putty knife first and scraped off some of the paper and paint.  Then I took sand paper and smoothed it all out.  I forgot to take a picture of the next step, but I puttied in all the holes, let it dry, and sanded that.)

(I had taken out the anchors and patched up the holes for the Nest, haha!  I wasn't thinking when I did it and there were multiple anchors and lots of holes.  Oh well, I was able to just poke the anchors back in the spots with minimal effort.  This is the back part that I had covered up so it wouldn't get dust.  Look at all that old school wires. Ha.)

(All finished!  Now I think it looks a little weird with the Nest just chilling on the wall, but it's better than the old wallpaper showing.  My mom asked me when I was going to take the wallpaper out of that room. . . uhm. . . never??)

Explanation of a Project

I realize my blog posts have been few and far between.  Today I went through a bunch of pictures on my phone and hopefully will have some more updates coming soon! For now, I'll start with the status of the last project I've been working on.

Back in December, remember all of my wallpaper removal?  Well that room is almost complete!  After all of the help we got from Steve's family, Steve and I were left the task of sanding some of the baseboards, and priming the walls.  About a month ago, we did just that!

  

(Steve did all the rolling, while I painted the the edges with the paint brush.  I didn't tape any of the trim off because we'll repaint all the trim later on.)

(So for now, the room is going sit as is with white barren walls.)

(It's amazing how much this room has changed and how bigger it looks now that it's all uniform with its white walls.  I'm excited to finally see the finished project, but for now it's finished for awhile.)

When I first started this project, I knew what this room would potentially be used for, but I didn't know the time frame of when it would be used.  But now I know!  Steve and I are thrilled to announce that our new Nursery will be used sometime around October 6th!  This has been a crazy hard secret to keep, but we're finally comfortable sharing that we're expecting a little one this fall!  Once we know whether baby is a boy or a girl, we'll make the decision on what color to paint the nursery.  

And for all of those doing the math and realizing I helped prime when I was pregnant, have no fear.  I did research on getting the best paint and also wore a heavy duty respirator.  I plan on doing some more painting in the next few months and will take the same precautions, so I don't want to hear it :-P.  

Hidden Secrets of Wallpaper

For the past month, I've been elbow deep in a new project. When we bought the house, we realized we really lucked out in buying such an old house without wallpaper!  However, one day while debating where to start painting in an extra bedroom, I discovered that there was wallpaper on the wall, it had just been painted over. (I've also figured out a couple more rooms have hidden wallpaper -- I knew the house was too good to be true!)

So back to the wallpaper -- I was just going to ignore the wallpaper and just paint over it like the previous owners had done.  However, I noticed a little bubble in the paint, and before I knew it, I had peeled off a big chunk of the top layer.  I'm not quite sure why, but the top layer that had been painted, peeled right off!  Although, it revealed another layer underneath that appeared to be stuck on the wall pretty well.

(All the paper removal started with a little paint bublle that I thought I could just "level out and spackle".  Ha ha, once I popped the bubble, this is what I saw -- at least 3 layers of wallpaper!)

(Within minutes, I had this much of the top layer peeled off.  At this point, I was still debating if I should keep peeling the paper.  I had no idea what endeavor I was undertaking!)

(With my little scraper, I was able to easily get under the first painted layer and peel it right off without any resistance!)

I had actually started this project before Christmas, and had gotten the whole top layer of wallpaper off within a couple days.  I returned back to wallpaper removal after the new year.  The next couple of layers proved much more difficult at removing.  I made a remover by mixing Downy fabric softener & warm water in a spray bottle.  The trick to the removal was saturating the paper with the concoction and stripping away each layer.  I'd spray an area, let it sit, remove some of the paper, resaturate it, go to a different section and spray, remove, resaturate, go back to the original area. . . and the process seemed to never end!  

(Corner area with all the wallpaper gone -- the white is the plaster.  On the left, you can see 2 layers of the wallpaper -- the pink pattern and the horse scene were 2 different layers.)

(I very carefully scraped away the pink layer to reveal a weird English horse/hound hunting scene.  Since this was the last layer, we assume it is the original wallpaper.  Although, only 1 wall had the hunting scene on it, while the other walls just had a subtle grainy paper that matched the hunting scene.)

(Upclose of the hunting scene.  There were two poses -- this one with the two horses leaping. . . )

(And this scene of the two horses standing still and the one rider blowing a bugle horn.  Notice the bugle player has blue glasses on -- that is because someone drew the glasses on him!  Ha ha, I can just imagine the first little boy living in this room and getting in trouble over drawing on his wallpaper.)

After a couple of weeks on intensive work, the wallpaper was finally all stripped away.  I even got help with a close friend. Amber (not my sister, but new friend in Lima) came out a couple of days and helped remove wall paper and clean the walls!  It's amazing what people will do for you for some Chipotle ;-).

(I think there were a couple bags of the first layer of paper that got thrown away before Christmas.  But here's the 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th layers of paper.  I felt really bad taking off the original wallpaper.  Who knows, that horse paper could be worth millions!  I was able to save a couple of sections of the pink layer and horse layer.)

(We found this signature -- P. Sorgnard Jr. Oct 11, 1937 "Pierre" Paperhanger.  Underneath the last layer of paper.  We at first thought he was the original owner, but after doing a lot of research, we figured out that Pierre Sr. was a French immigrant.  He lived in the area and was an interior designer.)

(We got intrigued and did some more research and discovered who the first owners were & we even found an original real estate advertisement for our house in a 1927 newspaper!  How cool is that?!  We've always been told -- as well as our paperwork -- that our house was built in 1935.  Nope -- definitely more like 1927!)

Ooops, I digressed.  Back to the wall paper removal.  Once all the wallpaper was removed, I've had to move onto step 2 -- wash the walls.  Not all the glue came off when I removed the paper, so I've had to wash each wall pretty vigorously in order to get all the residue off.  It's taken nearly an entire week of just wall washing.

(All the brown specs are pieces of wallpaper and glue stuck on the wall.)

(After a vigorous cleaning, the plaster is back to being smooth and ready to be spackled/painted!)

I still have another wall to wash, and then it will be on to step #3 -- spackling & smoothing the walls!  I had high expectations to have this room done in a month, but I'm looking at it more realistically and expecting another month or two until the walls are painted and the trim is repainted.