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!

Repairing Drywall

One of the small bedrooms in this house, was dark blue wallpaper, and the opposite walls, at one time, had stick on cork tiles. They were stuck on quite well, and at some point the previous owner must have tried to remove them, taking the drywall surface paper with it. So, now we are faced with the fuzzy insides of the drywall board.

We were trying to avoid tearing down the drywall, as this would damage the ceiling, and it looks like they had already put another thin sheet of drywall on as a second layer. (who knows what happened to the first layer!).

I took off as much loose paper as I could, and the remainder of the cork, and am trying my hand at "mudding". I have already used two small pails of spackle, and will sand it tomorrow, and see what it looks like. Worse case scenario, this room will have a "plaster look"! (That is the before picture you see)