While I have been home I have been helping my boyfriend out with some home renovations. It's been slow going and we take breaks in between projects but so far it's been mostly painting rooms and throwing away items that have been hanging out in his house from past roommates. This weekend we finally decided to start on a big project that has been long overdue. 

In the hallway, someone decided to go ahead and PAINT over the wallpaper. And it is old wallpaper from the 1970s. The trouble with this is that the paint has made it impossible to get through to the wallpaper and in some places you can see the wallpaper coming through if you look in the right places. After months of talking about it and then deciding to just go for it, we got a steamer (rented) and supplies to start scrapping it off. First of course we used the scoring tool and put little holes in the paint and then started to steam away. 

The first thing that happened was that the paint was not coming off. It was basically making us having to work 10 times harder to get even to the wallpaper. After some trial and error, I figured out a way to get the paint off. We needed it to bubble and then peel the top layer and then steam the paper and then it comes off like a dream. The issue though is that it was taking a million years just to get the paint off. It became apparent that we were in some trouble with time here. 

So we decided to try some other things to see if maybe we can get the paint to come off faster. What we discovered (and keep this in mind folks if you run into this issue.) is you take paint thinner put a layer on the paint and then leave it overnight to dry it creates a glue-like consistency. Leave it overnight and then come in with the steamer and steam a section. When you do that you then create a small hole in the paint and start to peel chunks away to get to the wallpaper too then scrap it off. It's a process that we found by accident and while it's not ideal it is faster than how we were doing it before. Of course that doesn't make it any easier for us and we are still struggling with anger issues and trying our best to hold back our fists but hey, we will get there. 

So this is your friendly reminder to NOT paint over wallpaper...ever...or you may be stabbed multiple times.. just saying.