If Walls Could Talk

We're finally getting around to removing the last of the wallpaper from our house, which is in the kitchen. (And by "we," I mean my fantastic brother-in-law, Michael). And actually, it's not really the last remaining wallpaper. We left the fun jungle scenes in the playroom (for now), and this bit of hilarious and possibly original wallpaper is hiding out in Elliot's closet.


The kitchen was covered with this not-too-offensive-but-still-not-our-style wallpaper when we moved in last summer.


The pansies and garden motif aren't so bad, but the "writing on the wall" has always bothered me. The wallpaper is covered with quotes about nature and gardening. Thoreau is all well and good, but the inconsistent grammar and punctuation of the writing really offends my obsessive-compulsive sensibilities. Here's what I've been dealing with every time I eat a meal:


You can see that the "quotations" fall into several categories:

1. Quotes attributed to actual people and correctly put in quotation marks.
2. Quotes attributed to actual people but not put in quotation marks.
3. Quotes not attributed to anyone but put in quotation marks anyway.
4. Quotes not attributed to anyone and not put in quotation marks.

It's enough to drive any editor-type person insane. Even more annoying is the misquoting of Thoreau. The wallpaper says, "Heaven is under our feet as well as our heads." Yes, you can cringe with me, fellow grammar nuts. The correct quote, from Walden, is "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads." Who proofreads wallpaper, anyway? Maybe there's a job for me when I go back to being a working mom...

Anyway. Back to our regularly-scheduled blog entry. When Michael starting removing the wallpaper yesterday, we discovered that there are five, count 'em, five layers of wallpaper in the eating nook. For those of you who haven't been here, we have a 1925 cottage, and some of this wallpaper looks like it goes back at least to the 1930s. Which is kind of cool, except when you're trying to get rid of it in a 24-hour wallpaper steamer rental period (we ended up keeping the machine an extra day). Here is a sample of some of the patterns that were beneath the top layer.


I'm actually kind of charmed by one of the layers. If it was the one that had been here when we moved in, I might have been tempted to leave it be and go retro with the kitchen. I'm guessing it's maybe 1940s or 1950s, and it looks like this:


Alas, it was layer #2, so it's in pretty hard shape (and smells like cigarette smoke, like most of the lower layers). Here is what the removal of five layers of wallpaper looks like:


And this is where we left off last night:


Luckily, the rest of the kitchen has very little wallpaper, and it's only one layer deep. So Michael should have an easier time of it today. Call me crazy, but I just can't get behind wallpaper coming back in vogue. Sure, it's classy and trendy now, but I keep thinking about the people who are going to buy these houses in 50 years and the hours of scraping they'll have to do. I'll stick to paint, thank you very much. You can change the look of a room in just a couple of hours. And I love to paint.

So... stay tuned for the painted incarnation of the kitchen coming soon to a blog near you!