Jon and Amber

The project, in process:

The comparison – old tiles, new vinyl:

Edited to add:
Oh, and just for the sake of history, here’s what the carpet looked like before we pulled it up to reveal the ugly tile (this picture is a couple years old):

We did some major housecleaning last weekend. Jeremy didn’t want to be left alone in a playpen, and I couldn’t let him help me clean the bathrooms, so he rode along with Jon to help with picking up and vaccuming.

Jon’s mom and grandma came over while we were at work on Friday and painted the baby’s room! (It’s ok, we knew they were going to do this – we even gave them a key to the house!) We had picked out a very light sky blue color and bought two gallons of the paint, which turned out to be enough for the whole room with a bit left over. It is beautiful!

They even brought the crib, dresser, rocking chair, and changing table up from the basement and got everything arranged nicely. PLUS, they dove into the mountain of clothes and gifts that was hiding our dining room table since the baby shower, and put everything away in the newly painted room!

I don’t know what Jon’s reaction was when he got home – he was here before me – but when I got home and saw the beautiful new room, I felt like I was on one of those TV shows where they kick you out of the house for the day and redecorate a room for you! I have been SO happy with how it turned out (a fresh coat of paint really can make a world of difference in a room), and I love going in there and just admiring it.

We still have to put blinds on the window and pick out some nice curtains or a valance, and the walls are still bare so we will need to decide whether we want to jump into painting a mural (we were thinking some big flowers and trees), or just stick with various wall hangings and decals for now. Either way is fine with me – I’m just so happy that the biggest part of getting the room ready is finally done.

Pictures when we get those last finishing touches up

Jon had to work today but I didn’t, so what do you do when you have some minor OCD tendencies and spent the entire weekend discussing how much you hate wallpaper? You start tearing it down on your Monday off when you’re home alone, that’s what!

I actually learned some interesting things about a couple kinds of newer wallpapers today.

First of all, I learned what “strippable wallpaper” is. Strippable wallpaper is wallpaper that you can just peel away with your bare hands and be done with it! No scraping, no glue, no residue – just peel and go!

Here is an example of strippable wallpaper (the border around the doorframe):

And here is the same door about 10 seconds later:

So easy! This is the border that was in the room we use as a closet right now (the future nursery). It was pasted up around the door, closet, and window. I pulled it all down with my bare hands in under three minutes. Sweet. This is also the room that used to have pink paint in it. I know this because we pulled down a shelf a while back and found this:

It’s a little more intense bubblegum pink in person. Eek!

Anyway, we will be repainting the room as soon as we get all of the closet setup out of there. I forgot to take a picture of that but who really wants to see all of Jon’s work clothes and junk? I don’t know what we’re going to paint it, but I think probably just some kind of neutral white or cream or maybe a very light tan or yellow or green. OK I actually have no idea. Don’t rush me. It’s not critical.

The second thing I learned today is that another kind of wallpaper is “peelable wallpaper”. It is not as quick and convenient as strippable wallpaper, but it is still a lot easier to deal with than the old kind of wallpaper with all the nasty adhesives and junk (or so I’ve read – I’ve never actually had to deal with removing old wallpaper).

Peelable wallpaper works like this when you’re removing it: First you have to peel off the outer layer – it’s usually vinyl or something kind of waterproof so you can wash it. That leaves a layer of paper and adhesive on the wall. What you do then is wet the paper down, saturating it until it starts to bubble away from the wall a little bit. I used a spray bottle with a 50/50 solution of warm water and vinegar. I don’t think vinegar is necessary for peelable wallpaper, but I didn’t realize when I started that this was the kind of wallpaper I’d be dealing with. And anyway, I like wiping stuff down with vinegar water. Freshens things up. No, really! If you have stinky smoky room, take a cotton dishtowel and soak it in vinegar and water. Wring it out, and then spread it out in your hands and swing it around the room like a flag for a while. It totally freshens up the room! Good for cleaning surfaces too.

OK, anyway, to get back on track… once you saturate the paper left on the wall, you basically just peel it off. You don’t really even need a scraper, but I found it handy for getting the edges started, or for the occasional stubborn spot that didn’t peel off on the first try.

Here is what the peelable wallpaper in our bedroom looks like:

(it’s not too bad but you can see EVERY. SINGLE. SEAM. and well, we just really hate wallpaper anyway)

Also, this is that hideous wallpaper border in our bedroom:

These pinecones went all the way around the room and around the door, as you can see above. (I took those pictures after I had already started peeling it off.) That wall where the door is does not have any other wallpaper, but the other three walls do.

Oh, and look at this classy job:

Oh yeah, they really did put a wallpaper border right over the air intake vent. CLASSY.

Here are some pictures of those steps I used to remove the stuff.

Here is how a small section of the wall started out:

(Notice the very visible seam. Every seam is that visible all around the room. Yuck.)

I peeled off the outer layer, leaving the inner paper layer behind:

Then I sprayed it down with my vinegar water:

And peeled the wet paper right off:

(That lighter spot in the bottom left corner is where they apparently got tired of painting dark forest green, and seemed to have just quit. Very weird.)

So that’s what I was doing today for fun. This weekend Jon will help me do the up-high parts of the walls that I can’t reach. I didn’t want to stand on a chair to do them because I always hear that pregnant ladies are supposed to be so clumsy, and while I don’t FEEL prone to falling down, I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.

Painting over that dark green is going to be real fun. *rolls eyes*

We got the rope “railing” added to the stairs on the north hill. Looks great!

Looking up:

Looking down:

And now it’s raining… what do we do with the rest of the weekend?

Jon installed the posts for the railing this evening after work. All we needed to buy was the bolts – the wood came from an old swingset that was in the yard of this house when we bought it. We took the set down right away, but kept the lumber. It was exactly enough for this project – what a perfect way to recycle!

The rope part of the railing also went up, but by that time it was getting a little dim and it would have been a little difficult to get good pictures. Watch for those this weekend!

Amber here, with a LOT of photos! We built a stairway to heaven! OK, not really – it just goes from the mailboxes on the main road, up the hill to our house. We used to just have a dirt/rock path, but now it’s prettier. VERY photo-heavy post, dial-uppers beware (or be patient!) Also, the full photoset is available on my Flickr if you are interested in looking at all the other pictures I took.

Saturday Morning, just getting started. Looking waaay down the hill. (Hi Bonzo!)

Same day, from below (it wasn’t really that dark out – my flash went off and made things look a little dark.)

Sunday, Day 2… lots more progress:

After the whole frame was built, we had no more screws left, and 5 nails:

This is the finished frame from below. It still needs to be filled in, of course. We did that the next day.

Here’s another picture of it with the mailboxes in the foreground. And now you can see that we have 6 neighbors.

Then I went for a short walk with the dog, and took some pictures of flowers. This is the one I liked best. It’s my desktop background now!

And then Bonzo rolled in another dog’s poop AND he rolled in a dead bird. Argh, that stinker. Literally. I swiped him down with his little bath-wipes and he wasn’t too stinky after that, thank god. I didn’t want to screw around with a whole bath.

“What’s that over there? More stinky stuff to roll in??”

Here’s Jon putting on a pout for the camera, and me grinning like a maniac:

On Monday (Memorial Day), we started filling in the steps:

We tossed some busted up concrete into some of the deeper ones so that we wouldn’t need to fill with as much dirt:

Bonzo followed us up and down the stairs as we filled them in. Here he is looking happy at the top step.

Next weekend, we will be putting on a railing. The idea right now is to use 2x4s or something like that as the vertical posts (although I still kind of like the idea of metal tubing…), and then run a 3/4-inch rope for the actual “railing” part. I’ll try to get more pictures when we get all that done.

We just had a very busy weekend. We spent a LOT of money on stuff for the yard – fertilizer, pesticides, seed for the patchy areas, a tow-behind lawn-spreader for Murray (still gotta get some pictures of it), and even one of those cool little lawn-tractor-sprinklers that travels along the length of the hose to water a large yard like ours! We’re hoping the lawn will get a little more green and a little less weedy by the end of the summer.

Jon also went on the roof to start cutting down a few trees that are a bit too close to the house… All this made Amber just a bit nervous every time a huge branch went flying past her kitchen window! Good progress was made, though, and no one got hurt.