Creative Renovating

The upstairs hallway had a wallpaper border all around the top, including the area over the stairwell.

There is no landing in this stairwell, making the ceiling two storeys high. The border was dry strippable, meaning the pattern part ripped off easily, but it leaves behind the brown backing paper. You then wet this and scrape it off. Sounds easy enough, but unless we can rent some serious scaffolding, this job has been left for now.

Until I got creative! I pulled a completely redneck move. I took a long handled mop and soaked the paper border over the stairwell, from the second floor hallway. I then took the wallpaper scrapper blade and "duct taped" it to a pole (used for painting ceilings etc) and proceeded to scrape off the paper. This actually worked! It fell all over the place, and took a lot of mopping to get it really wet, but it worked.

Did the same trick when it came to painting the primer on the wall. I "duct taped" the trim paint brush to the pole, and carefully edged the paint. Not too bad at all! No one could believe how I did this when they came in to do work on the house today. I promised Jeremy, that not once was I in danger. I did not go anywhere near a ladder, just got creative with the extension pole!

Painting the Walls

This 37 year old semi detached house, was wall to wall wallpaper. It was stuck in the 80's and needed to come down. After lots of hard work, we all managed to do our share of wallpaper stripping.

Now the next step, was to wash the walls. Glue residue left over from the wallpaper will turn your paint finish to that crackle finish if you don't get it off. After washing with TPS solution, we filled holes with Spackle and sanded. (Lots of holes from hooks over the years).

Finally, the painting. I love the zinsser products, and purchased a HUGE tub of it, and had it tinted close to the finished colour. This way, we only have to do one coat of primer, and then one coat of the finish paint. The zinsser primer covers ALL paints including oil paint, it makes a great surface for the finish colour.

I also painted the ceiling. Even though it seemed OK, it just freshened the place up with 2 coats of ceiling paint.

Painting the walls, can make a huge difference to a room. After all the prep, it is starting to look good, as you can see in the primed picture compare to the before picture of the same room. It is still in progress, but coming along. (The before picture is the one with the pink wallpaper)

Next is to prime the window trim and bedroom doors (some are pink!). Plus we are still puzzling over one bedroom that had cork board glued to the wall, and that the previous owner had ripped off the wall, pulling off the drywall paper with it.