Taking Down That Border!

I am now officially really ready and prepared for the delivery of the new bookcases. They can call any time now!

I wondered if the room would look funny now, with a big spot without border. Nope, it doesn't! I like it better. I was afraid we might have gotten so used to it, that it would be missed. No worries there! Here is a photo of the wallpaper border in Mike's cave:




The left edge just shows the part I had gotten to with ripping it off! My aim was to do this all with as little mess as possible, since there are some parts that will be harder to get to than others, and I won't want to have a big mess down the wall. I found that dampening the border with a slightly more than damp sponge made it quite easy to lift the edge and rip off the top part of the paper. Further dampening made it fairly easy to scrape off the lower part. This paper has/had a ton of glue, and left a lot of residue. I scraped off as much as I could, and used the meshy side of the sponge to wipe off as much as I could. I think I will try going over it all one more time, with warm soapy water. One really nice thing, there are no marks to remove. I know in some of the rooms, they used pencil drawn lines as guides, but that wasn't the case in the cave! Now for some comic relief...




Anne took this and must have jiggled the camera a bit, as it isn't quite focused. She nearly died laughing, as I was dampening the under part of the paper, and left the sponge while reaching to do something. I didn't even think about it, but the sponge stayed right where I left it. The sponge has mesh on the one side, and almost a velvety (soft hairy) covering on the other side. It is the velvety side that stuck so handily to the wallpaper!

I was surprised to see that in the photo, the part that has all the paper removed looks darker than the rest of the wall. While I was working on it, the area that had been papered looked lighter than the rest of the wall. All I can figure is that the glue residue photographed funny? This was taken before the final washings of the area. It all looks just fine, now!

The best part of it all is that I finished more than enough for the purposes of getting the bookcase put in. Now I can take my time with the rest, although I don't plan to drag it out too long. I so much like the look of it without the border, that I am anxious to have it all finished and off there! I am sure Mike will appreciate the disappearance of the flowery stuff, too! Once all that is done, I think I will start taking down the border in the kitchen.

Not much else from here. We had cranes in the yard yesterday--Mike rather startled them when he came around the corner of the house and almost ran right into them! He was making the rounds, looking for things to photograph. He has been enjoying the new lens and has taken a number of really good photos!

Nothing new from Brian and Christine. This is always a busy time, getting ready to move, closing out the old job, and looking forward to the new assignment, etc. Of course, having the baby keeps them on their toes, too!