It seemed so simple when I first bought the house: the older half of the house was wallpapered. They tell you not to judge a house based on cosmetic things such as wall color or wall paper. So I didn't. And to be honest, I'm still glad I didn't. It's been a pain in the butt, but my house is still absolutely beautiful.
One day I got the itch and decided to start removing the wallpaper. Anyone who's done it can tell you that removing wallpaper is not that simple, but I had done it before and was prepared. Or rather I thought I was prepared.
Under the first layer of wallpaper was another layer of wallpaper.
The living room had two layers of wallpaper and the dining room had three. So what was under all that wallpaper?
It's a little hard to see in this picture but in the corner you can see the old 1970's faux wood paneling. I thought it was a little odd that someone would wallpaper over paneling instead of removing the paneling...which said something for what could be under the paneling. See the mauve-ish color in the middle? More wallpaper under the panels. What's under that layer of wallpaper?
Wood. Some of you may not think that's strange. I however, was hoping for drywall...or as they say up here, sheetrock. Best case scenario. With a house this old though, I should know better than to hope for the best case scenario. Interestingly enough, under some portions of the older wallpaper was a muslin cloth which is indicative of a much older process. Very cool.
On one section of the old wallpaper was a list of phone numbers written in pencil. I can only imagine that was where the phone once sat. I didn't call any of the numbers but it was fascinating to see.
For a little background, once I figured out that the job would require more than scraping wallpaper, I decided now would be a good time to update the electrical and insulate the house. The electrical in the old half of the house is knob and tube wiring. In itself, not so bad but combined with the newer copper wires it can be a fire hazard. To my knowledge, there aren't any combined wires, but up to date electrical is usually a decent idea. Not to mention that you can't fully insulate the house with that sort of wiring. The wires dissipate their heat into the surroundings, which actually makes it fairly safe. That way they won't overheat and catch on fire. But that also means the old part of the house is not insulated. At all. Ever lived in a snowy environment in a house without insulation? Yeah. Exactly.
So I called up a recommended contractor and got a quote. Holy moly!! I decided that to save money I would do the demo (tearing apart the walls so he can do the insulation and wiring) and do the drywall and trim myself. How hard could it be?
After taking a pretty decent fall in which I broke my wood holder/rack (for wood stove wood) and the controller to my wood stove blower, I decided I was done and I'd see if the contractor would finish the demo at a discounted price. He came down a little bit, but since fire season was in full swing I decided to just let it go and hand it over.
When the insulation and new electrical was finished, my superintendent came over to show me how to hang drywall. Being as not a single wall in the house is level, measuring and cutting the drywall was tedious work. We spent an entire day measuring, cutting, shaving down and hanging drywall. We got a lot done, but he had a life to go back to and during the next couple weeks, I hung drywall on my own when I found time.
With the drywall up, I was beginning to feel relieved about the whole process. I could now envision my house with walls, which is something it had lacked for several months. The next step was to tape, mud, sand, texture, prime and paint the drywall. It sounded easy enough.
First I taped all the seams with an adhesive mesh tape. I chose this over the paper tape for a couple reasons. It seemed like it would be easier and it also allowed me to apply quick drying mud. Mud has to be applied three times to the seams and screws and if you have to wait an entire day for one coat to dry, it's going to take awhile. In the picture below you can just barely make out the tape.
Then I applied the drywall mud...three times. Every single seam and every single screw got 3 layers of drywall mud. It was exhausting.
After all the mud had dried, it was time to sand. In the dining room I sanded everything by hand. What's nice about that is the dust falls straight down (onto my head and eyeballs). What's not nice about that is it takes a lot of time and my shoulders were aching pretty badly by the end of it. One of my captains suggested I use a palm sander, which I own. I didn't think to use it because I figured it would take off more mud than I needed and I'd have to redo it. He said it should be fine. So I went home and took out my Dewalt 5" Orbital Palm Sander (power tools!) with vacuum attachment and tentatively set to work. What's great about the palm sander is that it took very little effort and was quick. What's not great about it is that even with the vacuum attachment, dust flew everywhere. It was so thick it set off my new smoke/CO2 detectors.
A note on the detectors. New California Building Code requires that with any new electrical work in a house, hardwired smoke/CO2 detectors must be installed (in pretty much every room). You know, I can almost understand their good fortune, due to the job I'm in, but I'm perfectly capable of maintaining battery operated ones. Unfortunately, when one detector goes off if it's hardwired, they all go off. That also means if one is malfunctioning (like smoke detectors never malfunction) then they all do. Next thing you know the entire house is beeping in protest.
After setting off the detectors in my house, I went to the circuit breaker and flipped it off. Ha! I'll show them! I thought. I went back to sanding and the detectors went off again. I climbed up on the ladder and removed the back up battery. It was almost Thanksgiving and leaving windows and doors open was not an option. And yes, I was wearing a face mask.
So once the walls were sanded, I went about practicing my texture technique on scrap pieces of drywall. It looked about average and I was in a hurry. The days to my big Thanksgiving party (that no one showed up to) were dwindling. I rolled the texture on with a paint roller and let dry for about 10 minutes, then I knocked it down lightly with a trowel. It didn't turn out half bad.
When the texture dried, I set about priming the walls. I think paint primer must be incredibly toxic because it's the most noxious stuff I used in the entire process. And I got some on my hands and feet and it literally took weeks to get it washed off. I even tried shaving it off.
I think I was looking forward to painting the most. I guess because I feel it's the easiest part...until I actually get to it. Painting takes so much time. It takes forever to cut in the edges and corners, then you gotta paint the walls and then repeat the whole process. Both rooms got two coats of paint.
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