What was I thinking??

So when we first looked at the house, I knew I would want to paint the kitchen and get rid of the wallpaper. It wasn't terrible, but it just wasn't me. Plus the seams were coming open. Sure enough, not long after we moved in, Jeanne started playing with the seams until she was able to pull a big piece! So I said it was time to remove the paper. One night, I pulled all the wallpaper off under the chair rail. Well, I realized I only pulled off the top layer. No biggie though because it came off so easy!




The next day (Saturday) we got out a scorer and chemical to remove the top layer above the chair rail (because I knew it wasn't coming off so easy). We sprayed and sprayed and the paper was stuck. So after fighting it for an hour or more, my husband got mad and just started ripping if off the wall. We soon realized our demise. Whoever built the house did not properly prime the sheet rock, as was common in the 1980's apparently, and the original wallpaper got glued straight to the sheet rock. As we were pulling the wallpaper down, we were also removing the sheet rock paper. This was turning ugly fast!!! My husband was not happy that this was not turning out as easy as we thought. As he does when something is going his way, he stomped off to the living room and I finished removing paper from the wall. I think I finished at 10:30 that night.

Shawn did prime a section behind the fridge sometime on Saturday, thinking we would find a smooth wall the next morning Wrong again! The paper was bubbled and cracked bad. So I went off to Sherwin Williams (which I highly recommend) for some help. The guy there explained that we would need to sand the walls down and then apply sheet rock compound since we were down to the gypsum board. So I brought the supplies and began working. I sanded the whole kitchen. Shawn comes in and sadly says that he didn't think it would be good enough. He was afraid the paper would still roll up. That just broke my heart! What was I thinking?? Why did I let myself think this would be a good thing to do?? Why didn't we just paint over the wallpaper??

Shawn then went to the store and bought a power sander. When he got back I had cheered up again, and he was confused. Until he went in the kitchen. I had cleaned the floor, swept up all the wallpaper, and laid out newspaper everywhere. I had control over something and it made me happy. Anyway, Shawn put the sander to use and sanded down the whole kitchen again in less than 30 minutes, whereas I spent a few hours. Plus the wall was smoother. After we put Jeanne to bed, we put up joint compound on part of the wall. I only bought one container, and it barely made one part of the big wall... We finished again about 10:30. Shawn kept saying, "What if in the morning the wall is just on the floor?" That was my biggest fear. Needless to say I didn't sleep well. The next morning, we woke up to a nicely compounded wall!! That night, we finished putting compound on the rest of the kitchen.