
Stripping wallpaper

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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You could cover the wall with a mosaic. The advantage is that you don't have to finish it all at once; you can let it grow whenever you have time and inclination to work on it...
Fix the stones or pebbles with a bit of hot glue, and fill it in with plaster later.