I don't usually notice interior design, but off and on over the last decade I've been drawn to certain spaces. What have they all had in common? Accent walls --- one wall of bright, stark color that contrasts vividly with the rest of the space. I figured the now shelfless wall could be my first stab in that direction.

But before I could start thinking about colors, I had to strip off the old wallpaper. My previous experience with wallpaper removal involved a steamer, some kind of chemical, and a seemingly endless amount of scraping. I wasn't particularly anxious to repeat the process.

To my surprise, when I tested a bit of my office wall Saturday morning, I found the paper easy to remove with only the supplies I had on hand. Rip back the plasticy outer layer, dampen the plain paper below with a wet rag, then scrape. Very satisfying! Looks like step one of the accent wall is well within my reach.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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