Oh Yuck Wall paper ~

Wall paper on drywall that was not primed is a royal pain in the ... -ss to remove.
I however did find a secret weapon that helped.

I watched YouTube Videos on 'How to Remove Wall Paper' and it all looked easy.
Just wipe with hot water, spray with hot water, use Dawn, and it will just peel right off and then you wash with hot water and vinegar --- or Dawn Dishsoap and get the glue off.

Easy Peasy.

Wrong.  All the walls shown had been primed.

Suggestions for taking wall paper off from un-primed walls?

Take down the drywall and start over.

Wow, that was not helpful and not what I wanted to hear. Another person wrote, get a steamer and it goes really well. The trick is hot water.

I started thinking about the Dawn Dishsoap and how it breaks down the water surface tension and allows the water to soak into the material.

This paper was nasty grungy.  After taking down the wall of photos I was grossed out completely.

Yuck.

Above the small closet door that is under the stairs:

Super yuck.  Why hadn't I seen it?  
In truth, I wanted to get rid of the wall paper years ago, but Rich didn't want to start a project like that.
So I began to ignore the ugly stuff.  I thought...one day I will get the chance to remove it!

And ... now I do.

Morris is on the stairs supervising the stripping.

And it doesn't come off very easily.

So I decided to take some Oxyclean and dab it onto a cloth, then wipe the surface of the wall paper and spray it with warm water.

Well not only did it help the water absorb into the wall paper, but it took some of the grunge out too.  Of course I sprayed up towards the ceiling and then wiped with the Oxyclean cloth and found that my ceiling was going to need a very good cleaning also.  

Insert a large groan ... however I am prepared for that and I figured it would be coming next.

Meanwhile, back to the paper.  Sometimes it would come off in larger strips and sometimes it wouldn't.

Between chores and errands, this section took all day. I'd be really discouraged if I had larger rooms to do.  But this is such a small house that I only have two partial walls left.

I was extremely surprised at how much cleaner and brighter the wall was after the paper removal.

Considering that it wasn't a primed wall, I didn't do too badly. Some of the dry wall finish came off but hopefully we will be able to repair that fairly easily.

Meanwhile Rich has been working on the bricks that had been put in the living room when Glen owned the house and had a wood burning stove on it.

Before the work started

All of the brick will be removed

After one day of removal.

This is a dusty and very noisy project so hubby has been doing it a bit at a time.

He will also be removing the very very dark paneling and replacing it with light colored 'car siding'.  He wants to retain the 'cabin' look with wood and I wanted bright and light walls.

This will be our compromise.

So onward.

Morris?

He is getting accustom to the work now.  He still dislikes the shop vac but it doesn't freak him out anymore.

I might take a day or two off from the wall paper peeling.  I'd like to do some hiking now that the outdoor temps have risen above the zero mark.

Wallpaper Removal

With the cold wicked outside weather and temps in the minus 0's, I thought I'd make an attempt at seeing just how hard removing the wallpaper would be.

I decided to try it on a wall that will be removed during the remodel.
First, I did some research on the how to aspect of removing wallpaper yourself.
The videos looked embarrassingly easy. Just hot water/Dawn mix or Vinegar/hot water...or use chemicals from Home Depot, Lowes, or some other store.

I decided not to use the chemicals.  I wouldn't be able to air out the house during the frigid weather.

So I picked a day to begin.  I quickly found that the walls were not primed underneath.  The wallpaper would not come off in beautiful long strips.
It was going to be a painful long ordeal.

First a shot of the wall.  Remember it will be removed during modeling so this was a good place to start.

And so I began.  The length of time that I worked on this actually was about and hour and a half.

But the process was slow until I began to figure out the best way for the removal. Below is a shot of the wall, and yes most of the floor tile has been removed also.

Short video:

Day two I started on the living room wall and around the doorway to the bathroom.

The small electric heater next to the bathroom was also removed.

The door frame to the bathroom had to be removed also.  In some places the wallpaper was under trim and in others it isn't.

Anyone looking at this interior and the wallpaper would agree, this little house really needs a face lift inside and outside.

This is where I stopped last night.  It looks like a mess and it looks like it was impossible work.

This section is coming off a little bit easier perhaps because I am learning to do it better as I go along.  I'm not in a mad rush and so the mess is minimal.

Crooked Creek Construction, LLC, will be doing the addition and the exterior work.  This portion of the remodel is going to be our job.

I'm actually looking forward to NOT looking at that awful wallpaper anymore!  

Taking down the Chimney

I was not sure about this at all.  But Rich assured me that it wouldn't be so very hard.

And so we began on the 2nd of November.  Of course we started this and the Bank Appraiser showed up as we were working.

I can say that this probably wasn't the best and most beautiful way to present our little house.  But we needed the chimney down and the weather was nice.

Here is a reminder of how things looked on October 3rd when I began to remove the old garden I'd let go to weeds this year.

And so began the chimney adventure.

First Rich started at the top.  Talk about making me nervous!

I was rather surprised at how quickly it went.

And I was surprised by what how it looked underneath the blocks.
Rich noticed that indeed the previous owner had a chimney fire at some point. 

The blocks were brittle and really no longer useful anyway and this was a project we'd anticipated doing eventually.

Morris of course, supervised.

It definitely looked like a real mess to clean up.

But now there was a long hole in the siding of the house that we had to cover before the weather turned bad.

Rich also had to do some patch work on the roof where the chimney had been.

By late afternoon we finished.

He got the skid steer and we cleaned up the majority of concrete and chimney liner pieces.

And now the house is sealed off and we await the next step.

The appraiser had said that a downstairs bedroom and a basement would significantly increase the value of the house.
Otherwise he was rather mum as he poked around and took photos.

He did say that he thought we had the perfect location.

And I can agree with him on that.

Moving along slowly...

When the house is remodeled and resided I will be making a new garden around the house.
I felt that moving these hostas and the annoying day-lilies would get them out of the way once work started.

Little did I know that it would take at least 4 to 5 wheelbarrows worth of plants.
I moved them to another spot where they would survive until I decided if they would fit with our remodel.

I am sure thinking of some nice perennials and mixed with four o'clocks, cosmos, and other wonderful annuals...they would look great along here.

We have some of the iron wagon wheels which I'd like to set up for climbing plants such as morning glories.  Not sure where those will go at this time.

I used to load my yard with flowers.
This photo is from my film days...1998!

I can say that at one time I was a domestic flower person.  Until I met the wild ones in the woods.

However, as I try to go to sleep at night, I try to imagine how I can landscape around the new addition and around the new porch to make this wonderful little place stand out more.

Here is a photo I took of the house last week.

It is an infrared shot, more in the line of artistic photography than of just documentation.

You can see the house needs a lot of tender loving care.  With Kurt's help, we'll return this house to beauty.

It will no longer be a home in severe need of TLC, but a beauty.

The paperwork has been done, it awaits at the bank and now we await the appraisal.

I cannot wait for work to begin.

Currently I am doing some graphic art to design curtains and even the shower curtain.

Today we signed the contract...

Kurt from Crooked Creek Construction LLC came by today with the contract for our addition.

We discussed a few things like flooring for the new part of the kitchen and how to transition it to the older part of the house.

Our next trip will be to the bank with all of our paperwork and get the ball moving on a loan for the remodel.  

I am really looking forward to getting a 'real' kitchen and some more room in the Little House.  It is somewhat of a big step for us.

But the roof is starting to look pretty nasty.  The shingles don't look like they will last another winter.  Truly, this Little House needs work.  Having nice windows that don't leak will be another great bonus.

Our heating for this house isn't much per year because it is so small, but improving the insulation all around with new windows will make our heating costs even less.

So onward!

Little House Update

Remodeling was supposed to start as soon as the road bans came off.
But unfortunately we had to postpone the starting date because of a health issue.

So for the moment, we are hanging in limbo until we find out a bit more about that.

In the mean time I am still going to take shots of this little place in preparation of a remodel anyway.

The roof, siding, and windows need to be replaced no matter what.

We also discussed the porch as must have.  It looks like I'm going to delve into some DIY remodeling for the inside.

I said before that I was tired of my dreary kitchen.  If we can't do the addition right away, I still want to make it look brighter and cheery!

I also would love to do the same to our 'West' Wing, more commonly known as the tiny living room.

The old brick wall and brick floor is a 'must remove'!  I want to pull the paneling and replace it with something light.
Oh, the dog stays, I'm not changing him.

A Little Bit about the Little House

I looked up the Appraisal from 1998 and found the following information about our Little House...in our Big Woods.

The Little House was built in 1982.
The house currently measures 20X26 downstairs with a half story upstairs.
According to the appraisal the downstairs has 520 square feet and the upstairs has 312 square feet.

Part of the remodel will consist of changing the bathroom.  

It really does need a face lift and has for a long time.  

A huge part of the remodel will be the addition on the north side.  This will add space for a 'real' functioning kitchen.  I will add that I have made this one do since 1996.

Your eyes do not deceive you, that is the whole kitchen.

Here it is from the back entry.

And a view from the 'dining' area.

You might be saying that this is a small space and you are quite right.  We love our Little House.
But I really am tired of brown.  The brown Zbrick, the dark brown cupboards, the pretty ugly wall paper and the brown brown brown ugly ugly flooring.

I'll refer back to these photos later as things change.  But you just have to agree we do live in a beautiful spot.

We are secluded and enjoy our privacy.

I've been sorting and tossing stuff I have in the kitchen and it is amazing the amount of 'stuff' that a person has and doesn't use.  So this process of the remodel is also consisting of me going through all parts of the house and doing a serious sorting job.

I bought some large plastic tubs with lids to move things into during the process. Since I've never gone through an actual remodel before, I'm not sure exactly what to expect.

However I will say that Kurt & Jesse [Crooked Creek Construction, LLC] have been very good at helping me visualize what will happen as we go along.

I need to take some photos from the north side of the house so you can see what it looks like currently.  

I'll be doing that for my next update.