Zen and the Art of Wallpaper Removal

I have spent much of the last week in the closet. In the bedroom closet, that is. Somebody who owned this house before my husband thought it would be wise to put wallpaper, of all places, inside the closets of the bedrooms.

As it turns out, this is a fairly common practice among homeowners, as I first discovered when painting the inside of the coat closet in my previous home. Only I didn't realize I was dealing with wallpaper at all until it was already too late. I was in the middle of applying a new layer of paint when suddenly, instead of leaving a beige color behind, the roller revealed a blank spot of wall. The wallpaper, as it soaked in the moisture provided by the new layer of paint, was coming loose from the wall and peeling off in little flakes, much to my dismay. With a slight change of tools, I was able to get away with burying the old paper under yet another layer of paint. With any luck, the new owners won't discover what's hidden in the closet until years from now when they decide to freshen up the paint.

Removing the wallpaper in our bedroom closet has been much like an archaeological dig due to the fact that quite a lot of decorating has gone on in said closet over the years. Underneath the faded floral wallpaper which we could see, was a layer of pink paint, which in turn was hiding another layer of wallpaper. Thankfully, only one of the previous homeowners had deemed it necessary to decorate even the closet's ceiling with wallpaper. (Who thought that would be a good idea??)

If not for the layer of paint in between layers of paper, I suspect the job might have been a bit easier, though "removing wallpaper" and "easy" are not words that are often used in the same sentence.

After the first few hours spent with the wallpaper steamer in one hand and a scraper in the other, I arrived at a zen-like state of acceptance. I came to terms with the simple fact that this was not going to be a quick or easy job. It might be several days before all of the layers were removed. Instead of thinking about all of the other things I could be doing if I weren't stuck in the closet, I focused on clearing small sections of the wall, celebrating one square foot of achievement at a time.

This afternoon, I scraped off the last little bits, with some help from a solution of vinegar and water (better than any store-bought chemical solution you can buy). Then I spent another few hours sponging down the walls to remove the uneven coating of brownish glue that had been left behind. Once I've done a bit of spackling, I can finally get down to the business of painting, which I could have started days ago, if only...

Let's just say there should be a rule for would-be decorators: Before putting up any wallpaper in your home, you must have had at least one experience taking it down. I think it's safe to say that would save our walls from a lot of ugly paper and save ourselves a lot of trouble!