The Heat is On

 

Pardon my reference to a really cheesy song, but I'm still giddy with excitement over a weekend discovery and I can't come up with a better title for this post. I won't torture you with the video.

Before I start, let me just say that this was a desperate measure taken by a desperate housewife. Don't think of this as a tutorial so much as a crazy story of how far I'm willing to go to remove wallpaper.

OK, so I went to check on my husband's wallpaper removal progress on Sunday afternoon. When I noticed things were still really slow-going, I jumped in with a wet sponge and a let me show you how it's done, Honey attitude. After 20 minutes and 10 square inches cleared I realized I was in for a:

"See, I told you this was difficult."

Now up until this point, we've tried a wallpaper scraper to score the paper, hot water, sponges, a spray on formula called Chomp and a plastic putty scraper. The only thing left to try was a steamer. I was close to going out and buying one, but that would've been stupid since this is our very last wallpapered room in the house. So I tried thinking of something we already have in the house that makes steam...

Tea pot ... Percolator... IRON!

Note: our walls are plaster. Ironing drywall might not be a good idea. Heck, someone out there might know why ironing your plaster walls is a bad idea, but it worked for me! Anyone ever tried ironing a wall?

Yeah! The top layer started coming off in chunks instead of little chicken scratch bits! I've never been so happy to use an iron. Sure, the iron was a little messy afterwards, but a little soak in the sink (unplugged of course) had it looking like new.

A friend of mine suggested that we keep a little bit of wallpaper for our scrapbook. Too bad we didn't think of that when the dining room and hall paper was coming down. 

So now we have half the bedroom walls wallpaper-free. My goal is to get paint on the there by the end of the weekend.  But which color will we choose? Martha Stewart Sunken Pool (top swatch), Glidden True Turquoise (middle) or Behr Windwood Spring (bottom). Or will we throw you a curve and choose none of the above?

The plot thickens!


OK, I lied about the video.