Steam, Slime, & St. Louis

Last night I sat here with my fingers on the keys ready to update my blog, but my poor brain was just too tired to put sentences together, so I went to bed instead.

This has been a busy, busy, busy week! Early Sunday morning we took Brad to the airport to fly to St. Louis for some continuing training. He'll be gone until late Thursday night, so I thought it the perfect opportunity for me to surprise him and redecorate our bedroom.

Sunday after church I dug into the job and started stripping wallpaper. The blue stuff in the spray bottle that makes wallpaper come effortlessly off the walls--doesn't. So we headed off to Coquille Supply and rented a wallpaper steamer. This handy device is worth every penny of the $15/day rental fee and it made easy work of stripping the wallpaper. The second step is to "remove residual wallpaper paste from the walls". Hmm. I don't see any paste. Maybe I can skip this step. "Skipping this step will cause the paint to bubble and peel later." It's like the book can read my mind!

I spray more of the blue stuff on the bare wall, let it do its thing, and then attempt to wipe it off. But what I'm looking at now looks like a scene out of Ghostbusters. (In case that doesn't bring up a mental picture, think a preschool art project involving a bottle of Elmer's.) I guess there was some residual paste. Wiping does nothing. Scrubbing just moves the slime around. I'm getting a little frustrated by this point, so I search Google for another source for removing this stuff.

TSP. It's an industrial strength cleaner that will take all debris off the wall and make it clean as a whiste. This information comes to me at 6:45 p.m.--after the hardware stores in Coquille have already closed. Only one thing to do. We pick up Caleb from baseball practice and head into Coos Bay. A pit stop at Dairy Queen for Blizzards ensures energy to keep working when we get back home. We swing by Fred Meyer and are now the proud owners of TSP.

After more trial and error (I'll spare you the details) I finally get some good advice from a fellow homeschooling mom regarding the technique for using the TSP. Now we're in business. It is a slow process, but the glue is coming off. After a day and a half of scrubbing, just over half of the walls are done. At this rate, I may not get to the painting until tomorrow! Next time I'm going to paint over the top of the wallpaper.