We spent the weekend working on the rental house. I had thought I'd be able to go in and just focus on painting all weekend but there were too many obstacles to get that done very well. There are 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, living room, and kitchen that all need painting. The ceilings need to be repaired and painted in the living room and one bedroom. The wallpaper border needed to be removed from a second bedroom. The third bedroom has a different color paint which we need to either paint over or buy new green paint for.
First of all, I want to make a special request. "JUST SAY NO" to wallpaper! Just don't do it. It may be tempting but just don't. I removed the wallpaper border in the bedroom yesterday and it was again a miserable experience. Previously, in Talia's bedroom at our house, I'd used DIF which is a gel that you spray onto the paper. I thought maybe a steamer would work better. It's not really any better.
It just takes a long time and you have to be patient - holding a heavy steam applicator over your head against the wall. It takes about 2 minutes per foot of border, holding the steam on. Then you pull away the paper slowly. It usually sticks still a a bit so you encourage it with a putty knife. It also was pulling some of the paint from under it off here and there so I ended up with some areas that need sanding no matter how hard I tried. For that bedroom, it took me about 4 hours. My arms are like jello.
With Talia's help, we did manage to get the walls painted in the other bedroom. Bruce ripped out a whole section of bowed water-damaged ceiling and replaced it (with Tacie's and my help).
Mom's still packing up boxes of books from the basement.
One note about my favorite current internet application - Google Documents. Google docs are stored on the internet for free. I keep password protected personal documents there that Bruce and I can access from any computer. We've been making a list of things that need attention at the rental house and tools and supplies we need. When we went to Home Depot, we had Tacie call up the document on her iPhone so we could access the list and mark off what we were buying. Very cool.
We still have a lot to do on this house. We're hoping to get it done by the end of the month.
