I’m not the handiest guy around. I have a stuffed-full tool box, but no heavy tools like a table saw. I have no problem checking car fluids, topping them off and changing burnt out taillights and such, but I can’t fix any mechanical part of a vehicle for crap. I put together all the assemble-it-yourself furniture from Target or wherever like a pro, but build a porch?…forget it!
However, the list of things that need attending to in our house (built in the late 1800s) has grown long enough, and our income hasn’t grown fast enough (to hire someone else), that it falls upon me to tackle a frighteningly long honey-do list.
Naturally, with a little goddess in the house, her needs go right to the top of the list, and so today I began peeling off wallpaper from the bedroom that had been her brother’s and will soon be her newer, larger, more bad-ass room (he’s 21 now and always welcome here, but it’s time for his sister to move up and he can use her old room, which will become the guest room, when he is in town). In some places, this means multiple layers of old crappy wallpaper, of course, and the previous owners had painted over the outermost layer just to make things more fun for me.
Good times.
All things considered, I’m doing pretty well (particularly since I’ve been doing it so far with only fingers and a Swiss Army knife…just call me MacGyver), and think I can be down to bare walls before July 4th, then move on to spackling and some plastering, and then painting and decorating. Goal is to have it ready for her birthday near the end of July.
I know I’ll be happy when it’s done. And who knows? Maybe my wife will be proud of the end result instead of make fun of me.
But just in the spirit of sharing, here’s what we look like around 20% through the wallpaper removal process:
