So we have moved. Well, we moved a wee while ago and I haven't blogged as we have been busy bees. We have now got to the stage where we can have a shower without the new kitchen flooding and the ever breeding dust seems to be calming slightly. It turns out that moving wasn't was awful as I was anticipating it to be. I have an amazing partner in crime. At the moments when I would given up and sat on the sofa overwhelmed by the task ahead, my husband was the driving force that got the job done. Ok so his boxes weren't packed as neatly and logically as I would have liked but we did it, we moved!
I thought I was going to be devastated when we were leaving the flat for the final time but to be honest it was much easier than I thought. I was a little sad to be closing the door but I was ready to move on and excited for the next chapter ahead.
This is the last photo I took in the flat. There it is, the wee space we lived out days in for the last 6 years. You can see the patches where our furniture stood and the strips where our footprints paced. We had many happy times there but I was ready to pass it on to the next family, for it to be someone else's happy home.
And this was the project awaiting us behind our new door...
This house was built in the 1950's and was cared for by only one previous owner. The house has been well loved but not updated too much over the years. Most of the walls had layers of lining paper, wallpaper and paint all on top of each other. NIGHTMARE. I have stripped wallpaper before and there is nothing like the satisfaction of un peeling a panel of wallpaper from the bottom of the wall and listening to it crunch as it pulls away from the wall and the satisfying pop as it finally separates from the wall at the top. Nope. None of that, just lots and lots of scraping. Lots of it. Loads of arm breaking boring stupid scraping.
So in my new position as expert stripper (ahem) I would like to impart my new found wisdom to all my friends who have similar challenges ahead.
1. Do not use a steamer to try to get the wallpaper off a house old walls. It will damage the plaster of the walls which will crumble away and come off in chunks along with the stamp sized strip of wallpaper you manage to prise of the wall. *SIGH*
2. Get this stuff. Or stuff like it, we chose the stuff from Homebase as it was pretty cheap. Dilute it down and spray it on with a spray bottle, wait for 15 mins and attack with metal scraper. Repeat with each layer of stupid wallpaper/lining paper the previous family lovingly glued to their walls.
3. Get the scrapers with the long handles. They are much more effective on stubborn wallpaper. However when used over enthusiastically they are capable of scraping off a layer of wall also! Take care.
4. Trick all friends/family/loitering strangers into helping. Honestly, I am confident I would still be peeling teeny bits of paper of the walls if it wasn't for the kind people who gave up some of their precious free time to give us a hand.
So we finally got to the bare wall stage - hurrah! Something so exciting about a bare wall ready to be decorated. We have no idea where to begin. This is a home for life and we plan to decorate it slowly as we go and as finances will allow. For the mean time we are enjoying the space and he luxury of having a garden and so it does not bother us that we have bare walls at the moment.
Anyways, its probably another few months away before we can call in the decorating favours from our friends and family. Give them time to recover.
