TheBanyanTree: I Should Have Gone Tubing

[Pam North]

Several months ago I found a new border for the kitchen that I loved!  Light
purplish and blue-gray flowers with green leaves... I could 'picture' it and
I really wanted to redo the kitchen, and so I bought enough packs of the
border then, so I'd have them when I was ready.  My friend Carla and I
painted the kitchen a light yellow and put up a colorful flower border when
I bought the house two years ago.  But, kitchens - mine at least!! - take a
lot of abuse, and I wanted to redo it!  We hadn't painted the border and
trim and doors (laundry room, pantry and exit) back then that were already
white, and they were looking especially bad!!  The sellers used cheap paint
and only one coat!!  The dirt wouldn't come off and they just looked
extremely dingy!!!!

So a couple of months ago I took a package of the border and went in search
of paint.  I wanted a wall color that would pick out the hazy
purple-blue-gray of the flowers, and a clean white for the doors and trim.
I bought the paint, and it's been sitting in the garage since.  When I
actually started to think about all the work involved with taking stuff
down, moving stuff around, I always got lazy and talked myself out of it!!

But in between baseball games and football practice and wrestling practice
when nothing else was going on, my son was itching to DO something!  Since I
didn't have anything to rip apart or tear up, he thought we should get
started on the kitchen!  So yesterday, around 11am, we decided the time had
come!  While he went out and finished mowing the back yard, I started
emptying the baker's rack and taking stuff down.  Once everything was
stacked on the dining room table and floor, I could start ripping off the
old border.

Oops.  That stuff didn't want to 'rip' off.  After playing with it for an
hour and trying to tease it off from the corners, I decided we'd need
'professional' help, so I was off to Wal-mart for some kind of wallpaper
remover.  I got a spray bottle of some kind of gel stuff, and a
specially-made-for-wallpaper-removal scraper.  When I got home I read the
directions (!!!), and they said if the top layer didn't peel off you should
'score' the paper first so the gel could seep through.  Oops!  I saw the
scorer tool but didn't think we'd need it!!  Wewe made X'ing designs on the
paper with a steak knife instead.  And sprayed and waited and tried
scraping.

It didn't work and the boy was asking about lunch, so we went back to
Wal-mart for the scorer and a pound of chicken tenders for him.  Thankfully
I also bought a putty knife/scraper while I was there (which worked SO much
better than their stupid scraper tool!!).  After we got home, he ate while I
scored all the border and sprayed some more.

Meanwhile we started painting doors with the new white paint while the gel
had time to 'work'.  Oops!  The new 'white' paint was drying a nice dingy
gray!!!  It was obvious where we'd missed because all of a sudden the old
paint looked fresher and brighter!!!!

Disgusted I went online and googled 'wallpaper removal'!  After a billion
pop-ups for stuff to buy, I finally found a 'tips column' where somebody
suggested newspaper soaked in a solution of one part vinegar to three parts
water.  (This actually rang a bell in my head... my father *was* a
professional wallpaper hanger for years!!)  So, if one-to-three would be
good, then six-to-one would be better!!!  And we tore newspaper strips,
soaked them, and stuck them on the walls over the border.

This was about the time that Jim (my better half!) came home from a hard day
of overtime on a Saturday!   It was close to 4pm, and we'd accomplished
exactly nothing!!!  But the good news is that the border FINALLY started
allowing itself to be scraped off!!  Who-HOO!!!!!  Unfortunately, some of
the paint underneath was also scraping off (!!!!), and even some of the
sheet rock under that!!!  Jim got a tub of spackling and started filling in
the holes (which, by the way, was a really pretty shade of bright pink!!,
that turned to white when it dried!!).  And he went and borrowed a friend's
electric sander.

I opened the can (actually plastic tub with a screw-on lid!) of the other
paint and brushed some on a part of the wall, just to check it.  It's a
beautiful shade of lilac.  Really, really purple lilac.  Oops!  Really
*really* not what I'd pictured for the walls!!!!!  I didn't want something
that purple!!

So, to re-cap:  I've maimed my walls removing border (which took a whole
day!!) that I had planned to replace with new border (which started the
whole thing!!) made by the same manufacturer that made the original that
wouldn't come off!!!!!  The 'white' for the border is wrong and I have to
start over with that.  The color for the walls is wrong and I can't use it
either.  So.  I've got a kitchen that's torn apart and a dining room that's
full of the stuff from the kitchen.  I've got two gallons of paint I don't
want to use, and border I'm pretty sure I shouldn't put up if I think that
I'll EVER want to remove in this lifetime.  And oh, by the way, the walls
behind the fridge still have border.  But I'm not really worried... I
*think* that the walls behind there don't have much paint either... we were
running low and didn't care about what wouldn't be seen.  And I don't care
about that space now either!!

But so I can't just walk away from this mess.  I *have* to come up with a
plan.  I HAVE to paint the walls....  Aurghghg!!!!!

I should have gone tubing.  Or gone to find a dog!  Pretty much anything
else.....

Pam