My Grandmother's Wallpaper

In the past year I've heard several women - always women of course - use the phrase "Wall paper is back." One was my mother who said that wall paper was back in and that there are so many neat patters and it was totally affordable now.

Here's the thing. Wall paper is not back in. It's only back in for people who are annoyed with what they've got and they want to cover it up. It's back in to wall paper manufacturers. I call bullshit - wall paper is not back in. I'm not saying that it can't be beautiful or amazing - but I'm sorry... I've got a bedroom with walls that follow the roofline. Do you honestly want to try and hang wall paper on that? I didn't think so.

I've never posted photos of my bedroom on here - but it so far has been the only room I haven't touched... until now. I was going to hold off and do it last. It's an amazing bedroom. Huge - probably 600-700 sq ft. Larger than my first apartment. It was a regular old bedroom, but in the 80's my grandparents knocked out the walls to the attic and built into it. It's amazing.

There is this wallpaper on it that is a sky blue with these little pink flowers with white leaves and stems. It makes me think of the movie Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lang... There is this scene where Dustin Hoffman - dressed as Dorothy - is at the country house with Jessica Lang and her father and Jessica Lang is talking about the wallpaper she picked out with her mother for her bedroom when she was a kid. Her mother told her that the wallpaper was going to be up there for a long long time so to chose something she liked a whole lot. Every night when she went to sleep and every morning when she woke up it would be there.

She asked her mom which wallpaper she would chose and her mom said that she'd chose the ones with the little daises and rosebuds on them because rosebuds are so cheerful and always waiting to bloom. Jessica Lang's character says she made so many plans looking at that wallpaper - she was always waiting for those rosebuds to bloom.

Of all of the things that I've done to this house - this was my grandmother's last stamp on the house. In 1989 when my grandfather set the house on fire everything got replaced, repainted, redone. Everything except the walls upstairs. In their bedroom there was this awful wallpaper she always wanted to get rid of but never did. In my room, it was paper she picked out and had put up.

Today I started pealing it off.

I'll keep it on two smaller walls - just because it's the last thing of her that's in the house. I know that she'd be happy with what I'm doing - the fact that I'm cleaning it and saving it and making it better, but it makes me sad that she's not here to see it when I'm finished.


So - here's the thing about old wallpaper. It often covers up even older wallpaper. . . and even older than that so on until you get to the plaster.

Such is the case with the blue sky and the little rosebuds. They cover up an awful kitchen looking grid paper that covers up some kind of palmtrees that I am going to guess is actually from the 1930's or 1940's. This paper is the same paper that we had under the three layers of paper downstairs I took off early on in the process.

I've done wallpaper before. I've gotten good at it. What I learned is that the super expensive solution that you buy and squirt on the walls to loosen the paper .... is crap.... and it's expensive. The best bet is a 1/3 solution of fabric softener and warm water. I can't remember who told me about this - but it's 100% dead on and genius. Always use warm water. The hotter the better. Also chose a fragrance that you don't mind smelling for several weeks.

If you're dealing with plaster - get a knife style scraper that looks like a giant razor blade. If you're dealing with sheetrock... use a putty knife. If you're on plaster you can scrape - but if you've got sheetrock when you scrape will peal off the first layer of the paper covering the sheetrock. I learned this the hard way. I assumed because it was old walls they were all plaster... not so much. The new attic walls are sheetrock from the early 80's - the room is plaster.

Some is going to scrape off the first layer of wallpaper but if you squirt it and soak it enough the first two layers will come off because its so thick and softened ... what with the fabric softener and all :). That bottom later the only solution is to soak it and scrape and then you get disintegrated brown sludge. Yummy.

Here is some inspiration for what I want my bedroom to look like when I'm done - think Hollywood Glamor - gray, black, white, and Tiffany's Blue:




I really want to figure out how I can put this chandelier in the apex of where the front roof meets the back roof - no idea how I'll do it