When we were looking for our house, I was never bothered by the hideous wallpaper that I would see on the walls.  I always thought to myself, “No problem, I can just remove it and paint”.  So, about 6 months after we moved into our first house, I happily chose which wall I would spruce up first.  I decided to choose a small wall in the kitchen.  I researched what to do on the internet, and headed out to the local hardware store to get all of my supplies.  I purchased a tool to perforate the wallpaper and some solution to disolve the glue.

I got home, busted out my ladder, and started perforating.  It took a LOT longer than I thought.  You have to run the perforator tool (I think mine was called the claw) in a circular motion over the section of wallpaper you intend to remove first.  Then you apply the glue disolver.  I had purchased a spray bottle, which I would not recommend if you are doing a large area.   Finally after all this, I was ready to rid myself of the ugly wallpaper.  I had visions of the wallpaper peeling sticker-like from the wall…this was not the case.  The wallpaper came off in little pieces, like when you’re trying to peel a super sticky price tag off of a gift or something.  I thought maybe I hadn’t put enough of the solution on, so I stopped and applied some more.  This didn’t seem to help any.  As I continued to peel the wallpaper I noticed that my drywall was coming off as well.  GREAT!  I was already too far in to turn back now, so I kept at it trying very hard not to ruing the drywall behind the hated wallpaper.

After the wallpaper was finally removed, I had to get back online to research how to patch drywall.  I also realized that the other walls in my house had texture on them, and the newly paper free wall would be smooth.  I researched how to easily add texture to my wall, and made another trip to my hardware store.  This time I purchased some wall putty, and an aerosol can of spray texture.  I headed home to begin phase two of fixing up this wall.  I followed the directions I read on the internet, and did a fair job of patching up the wall.  I even sanded it down so that it would be nice and smooth.  We won’t mention the fact that the dust created by this process set off the smoke detectors, and freaked out all of our animals.  Then I got my spray texture, and began to spray my wall.  Now here’s where I know for sure I made a mistake, the evidence of which you can see as you walk through my kitchen even today.  The spray texture doesn’t just spray directly in front of it, it flings the texture bits out to the sides as well.  I didn’t have the fore-thought to put up plastic to cover the sections that didn’t need to be textured, so the hallway attatched to the work in progress has little white streaks sprayed across it.  This is a constant reminder that I should not attempt home improvements on my own.  I also learned that the aerosol can comes with a very strong smell that really bothered me at first, but as I continued my texturing it became less and less noticeable.  In fact, I didn’t smell it at all by the time my husband came home and freaked out because I hadn’t opened the windows to ventilate the room.  We quickly opened some, and I don’t think any harm was done.

By this time, I’m so sick of this project that I don’t want to even think about it anymore.  However, the wall is out in an open area, so I have to finish.  I make another trip to the hardware store to purchase painting supplies.  I think this final phase of the job was the easiest.  I just painted, I didn’t think about what to do in the corner where my painted wall would meet the other wallpapered walls.  Nope, I just painted…I wanted to be finished.  Finally it was done, and I was very relieved.

I have two other rooms in my house that have ridiculously ugly wallpaper.  We have lived in this house for 5 years, and the ugly wallpaper still greets me everyday I walk into those rooms.  I’m pretty sure we will hire someone to remove it, because taking down wallpaper is a long, messy, and sometimes stinky process.