FYI: Desktop Wallpaper is MUCH easier to remove

I live in a house that was built circa 1983. It came equipped with all sorts of modern conveniences — indoor toilets, telephone lines, closets, and that sort of thing. I actually LOVE it here. L-O-V-E, love.

My east-facing view of the snow-capped mountains is breathtaking at sunrise. And, as an added bonus, I'm surrounded by serenity as my neighbors are comprised of retirees and doctors on this cul-de-sac that only sees cars every morning when someone delivers the morning newspapers, at lunch when the mailwoman delivers our mail, and in the evenings occasionally when one of the doctors is having a late-night kegger. Aside from that, the only guests are of the wild variety — Canadian geese, deer, woodpeckers, and animals of unknown species and origin that creep through the night and kill the geese and deer, but unfortunately, not the woodpeckers. On summer nights, to have the window open and hear the sounds of something fighting for its life, being attacked by God only knows what, is uncomfortably THRILLING to listen to. Sort of like hearing James Frey confessing to Oprah about the non-truths of his memoir… I was sweltering with embarrassment for him, and yet I couldn’t turn away from the train wreckage interview that it was. Anyway, I love my home…

…EXCEPT for the circa 1983 wallpaper covering 89 percent of it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to try taking wallpaper down yourself?? Well, I didn’t, as I toured the place a year and a half ago, just before making an offer, all the while creating mental notes about which room would be de-wallpapered first.

HA!

My bedroom. That was the room I decided to start with because I loathed staring at that hunter green trellis and ivy just before entering dreamland. It’s like a psychedelic jail cell.




“Leave it alone,” Allan advised. “Not unless you’re committed to doing the whole room, which, even with both of us, is next to impossible with four children, two under the age of two, running around.”

“Yeah, sure,” I retorted. I’ve managed to shop at the grocery store with four kids “running around.” How hard can this be?

So I recently got online and did a How To search for the best way to remove wallpaper. According to Mr. Google’s trusted do-it-yourselfers, using vinegar was the way to go. And so I waited for Allan to be gone (so as to astonish him with my astuteness), gave my five-year-old a free TV pass equivalent to an all-you-can-eat buffet. I then recruited the help of my oldest, and we worked when the babies were napping.

After just one hour, we’d used enough vinegar to remove the skunk stench off of every stray dog in the entire state of Colorado (which is to say, a lot). It was… very unlike the do-it-yourselfers said it would be. Read as: BRUTALLY HARD.

Two hours later, I finally decided to dismiss Antonia because, even with windows open, the vinegar was making her eyes burn and water. I won’t even get into what the stench was doing to her stomach.

But as it turned out, the whole thing was for naught, anyway. Allan was not so much astonished by my astuteness as he was with the fact that he didn’t immediately notice the missing one-foot-wide strip of trellis the entire weekend long…which, by the way, took an entire weekend to remove from top to bottom…. JUST the one-foot-wide strip.

So, I suppose the wallpaper stays, at least until the children are in college, or I get one of my neighbors to trade spaces with me (double HA!) or I die from a trellis and ivy laden nightmare where I’m trying to escape through this one-foot-wide opening, all the while choking on strange vinegar fumes… who invented wallpaper anyway!?