This week, I handed over to my BJJ coach, James, to spend a day at the slum, stripping that blasted wallpaper. For those who don't know him, James looks like this:
I went up to the slum this evening, to have a look at what he'd achieved, and took a few pictures.
That's the kitchen entirely done. Except that fireplace, which we'll have removed anyway. Oh, and the paper round the boiler:
Here's the other wall in the kitchen:
This is not a very exciting picture, but I just wanted to show that James had managed to get the paper off the ceiling in the kitchen:
So, maybe this isn't so bad. There can't be much left.
Obviously there's all this:
This:
All this:
This:
This:
There's more. I just gave up taking pictures.
You'll recall that the wall with the creepy cat head ornament remained untouched?
Well, its malevolent power was no match for James. Here is the wall as it looks today:
But then, just before leaving, what did I notice watching me resentfully, having once more escaped disposal?
Normal service will be resumed on Saturday, with the big boulder having been handed back to Siobhan and me....
Once again, I am entrusted with responsibility for today's blog post. Siobhan was singularly industrious today, clearing all the wallpaper from the bathroom and substantial parts of the stairs and kitchen before heading off to Exeter for a break. The pictures below illustrate her work, while also giving a nice sense of how mental the previous colour scheme was :
Let's look in more detail at that bathroom. The remaining patches of blue are patches where the wall was painted, but not papered.
That shade is quite familiar... perhaps we've destroyed an undiscovered Yves Klein masterpiece? Anyway, let's look a little more closely at the area by the sink.
Great. I also uncovered some further cracks in the creepy-cat-mask room, but omitted to take any pictures. Perhaps I'll save those for tomorrow.
Anyway, moving on to the kitchen.
I decided to have a go at removing the kitchen units. Using brute force. And ignorance.
This actually proved to be surprisingly effective. And here's what I found underneath.
Yep. A white plastic jelly mould, some oven mitts, a roll of cling film... but wait, what's that.
Mmmmm. This photo doesn't really do these year-old sausage rolls justice. They were almost black and looked really vile.
But, it was about 2:30 and I hadn't had any lunch, so I ate them anyway.
Here's the kitchen, with worktops removed. Also visible in this picture is my new step ladder.
And here's where I put all the stuff from the kitchen.
There is SO MUCH wallpaper in this flat! There is now ever so slightly less, but still SO MUCH! I'm starting to dream of wallpaper. Every room I go into I'm checking the corners for wallpaper sections that are lifting, providing starting points for stripping. Every room I go into that is painted rather than wallpapered, I am mentally high-fiving the rational person that made that interior design decision. Every wallpaper papering person I am internally cursing, and if I'm honest, fantasising about suffocating with sections of woodchip.
I'm feeling quite emotional.
It may be something to do with the evil cat mask. We had turned up at the slum today with the intention to strip the bathroom - but then realised that there are no powerpoints for the steamers (duh) and we didn't bring an extension lead. So cat mask room it was.
Now again, it's not a competition, but I had been spending Saturday punting in Oxford (suprisingly tough on the arms - those poles are heavy!), and this morning lugging a heavy bag around central London. But I still managed to clear this area:
In the same amount of time that Rob did this:
Fans of wallpaper removal may like to know that we are using the 'score-with-a-stanley-knife-then-steam' method of removal here. Fans of tea breaks may like to know that we have developed a new rule for wallpaper steamering - when the steamer runs of out of, erm, steam - it's time for a cup of tea.
We have installed a kettle in the slum (prompting me to wonder whether shutting the kettle in a room with the windows closed and boiling and re-boiling it would eventually mean that the wallpaper would fall off of its own accord) - but we forgot tea spoons. So I like to think of this as proper builder's tea:
Yes, that is a screwdriver. Not the cocktail, although I could perhaps have done with one.
So, onwards. I'm afraid we had to resort to the previous method of stripping the top layer of paint and then steaming the paper underneath, because that paint is so completely waterproof. For future reference, if you ever need to build an ark, I'd go for this stuff.
And that reminds me - I think I forgot to explain how we coped in the green bedroom without a second steamer. I had read on the internet that a mixture of fabric softner and water was effective - and it is, strangely - except that our bedroom now smells oddly of Lenor. It's also a bit weird to be washing your walls, and impossible to avoid covering yourself in it - so I smelled strongly of linen fresh summer breeze or something for a good while.
Anyway, no fabric softner for this room as we have a steamer each now, and we eventually made it to this stage:
Eagle-eyed readers will be able to tell which side I stripped, and which side was Rob's. And not just because he is standing on his side. Those lovely high ceilings feeling less lovely now.
Here's the result of our efforts:
You won't have forgotten about that mask. We hadn't either, but without discussing it, we'd both avoided starting on that wall.
It's still like that. We ran out of time, steam, and willpower. And now it's even scarier.
The only other odd thing was this piece of rope I found in the wall:
Siobhan has gone for a much deserved break this weekend, narrow boating on a canal near Oxford with lots of girls. It's probably a bit like the "Lynx Boat":
In Siobhan's absence, I asked my mates to come over to the slum and do unpaid hard labour in her place. All swiftly fabricated excuses, with the notable exception of Richard. He's probably angling for sympathetic coverage in the blog, with a view to endearing himself to our female fans.
I got to the slum at about 10:00, equipped with a second wallpaper steamer which I had acquired from Argos, new fine-quality wallpaper scrapers from Mr. Khan's (3 for £1), spare overalls and beer. Swiftly got to work on the remaining wallpaper in the main reception room (a room which an American might call a "den"). In the first hour I managed to remove about twenty square centimetres of wallpaper and break two of the three rubbish-quality scrapers I had bought from Mr. Khan.
Rich turned up at about 1pm. As the first of our friends to visit the Slum, I proudly / apologetically showed him round. I soon found myself giving a Foxtons-esque commentary and talking about "the potential" and "authentic, edgy feel". Then I caught Rich looking at me like I was deluded.
So, swiftly put him to work and we started hacking away at the ridiculous wallpaper. There are two, and in some places three, layers of woodchip wallpaper. In some places PVC appears to have been used rather than proper wallpaper paste. The underlying wall and the paper itself have been painted and repainted at various times, and working out the sequence and chronology might have made a good project for someone studying archaeology. Working out what possessed the former owners to paint different parts of different walls simultaneously pink, brown, blue, green, yellow and purple might make a good project for someone studying psychiatry. With two wallpaper steamers in operation, it swiftly became a sort of psychadelic sauna. Rich also made me listen to the Wurzels' Greatest Hits. Which was odd.
Anyway fans, after 15 man hours of work, (not counting the time Siobhan and I had already spent on this room last weekend), it's almost time for the big reveal. First, here's a reminder of how it looked before:
And here's how it looks now:
No carpets, no wallpaper, no ceiling tiles, no carpet grippers.
Because most of that's piled up at the other end of the room.
Readers will recall that, in an earlier post, Siobhan had referred to a new crowbar which I bought when my claw hammer proved inadequate. Some of you no-doubt felt a little cheated that no image was provided. Here, you can see said crowbar being held by Richard (having been threatening to beat him with it all day, I let him hold it as a treat).
Let's go back and have a slightly closer look at what our efforts had revealed....
Hmmm.... That doesn't look so good. And neither does this:
But it pales into insignificance beside this:
Great.
When you come round, make sure you don't jump up and down in that corner.
Today wasn't really the best of times, or the worst of times, but it did start off with a funny story. It goes like this.
Earlier on this year, we were gazumped (sort of) when trying to buy a flat in East Dulwich. It was all very annoying and a bit upsetting, but things worked out well in the end (sort of), since we then bought the slum (sort - oh no, that bit we really did do).
Now, today marked the beginning of a potentially long period of wallpaper removal (and probably tedious run of blog posts). So on Friday, I asked the East Dulwich Forum (as any sensible East Dulwich-borderer would do) if anyone had a wallpaper steamer they'd be willing to lend us. A nice chap called Dave emailed me to say yes, no problem, and no charge. And here is my address.
Interesting, thought Rob and I. That address looks familiar. Oh yes, suspense fans, it's the gazumping flat! How weird. Dave didn't seem fazed by this and we gave him a bottle of wine. It wasn't really his fault after all, and we certainly need all the good karma we can get.
So here we go. Apart from some of the hallway, all of the wallpaper in the skanky flat is lovely 70s woodchip. Wickes describe this as 'classic, popular, and economical'. I agree with all of this. Just unfortunately not popular with us. And regrettably not popular enough with our predecessors, who decided to disguise it by painting it with waterproof paint, helpfully preventing our newly acquired steamer from working effectively. So I scraped, and Rob struggled with the steamer to get the rest of the wood bits off.
Now it's not a competition or anything, but after an hour this is how much I'd removed:
And this is how much he had done:
Not a competition, but you know, just saying.
In the process, we discovered a fire place (I know!):
And acquired our first injury (my fault, should have worn overalls):
(sorry for the rather scary photo of my leg, but I thought it warranted a photo. And I was wearing shorts, I promise)
Eventually, after a lot of scraping, a lot of steaming, and a lot of bits of wallpaper in my hair, we got here:
Yes, I thought so too. It almost looks worse. *sigh*
The pink and blue bedroom is mercifully painted rather than wallpapered, so we started on the sitting room. At the first wall, I wondered why they'd bothered to wallpaper at all, since the colour of the paper exactly matches the colour of the plasterboard underneath, allowing me to upload the world's most boring photo:
But the other walls look rather more interesting. In a really, really, hideous way. We haven't finished yet, so you'll have to wait for the big reveal. Before we left for the day though, Rob had an epic win with the longest continuous piece of wallpaper we'd managed all day:
No, not that one, this one:
Woo! And here is Rob with his 10-pound catch:
Brilliant. People tried to convince me that stripping wallpaper is satisfying - after three hours of scraping and chipping at one centimetre square patches I didn't believe them. I still don't, much.
Yes, it's hammer time! Not, fortunately for you and me, Rob's latest foray into the world of street dance, but his attempt to remove these from the stairs:
And grip they certainly do.
So grippy are they in fact, that we had to give up early on and return to the hardware shop for a crowbar. A more effective tool, but one without an early 90s hip hop soundtrack unfortunately.
Anyway, whilst he was doing that (I tried, but it was quickly clear that my girly squeals everytime a nail flew out were too irritating to tolerate) I removed the carpet from the rest of the stairwell. Weirdly, the last pieces appeared to be cemented to the stairs:
Perhaps they ran out of grip-grippy-grip-grip things.
Removing the carpet in the smelly toilet revealed this (brace yourselves):
NOOOOOO! Recognise those?! AAAAAAAH! Deep breath. (not too deep - that toilet really really smells)... oh, and another thing about that toilet. Like sensible adults, we commissioned an asbestos survey before embarking on this project. Then, like less than sensible adults, we slightly forgot about it. The results arrived this week - not only is that toilet properly smelly, but it also has asbestos in the cistern! It truly is a toilet from hell! Rob assures me that this is fine, and nothing to worry about, as long as I don't break the cistern. I've never broken a cistern in my life, and actually would struggle to reach this one, but it's now my number one fear. It might even beat the scary cat-mask.
[Hammer House of Horror film music (haha!)]
So I rescued my favourite threshold plate, and got closer to that horrible toilet bowl than you want to imagine.
All for this:
I know, I know. I'm so over it. Those tiles can just go and stick themselves. I am a broken woman.
So psychologically broken in fact, that I found it hilarious that we found a monopoly house under one of the carpets, allowing us to do this: (sorry)
Here's the other wall in the kitchen:
This is not a very exciting picture, but I just wanted to show that James had managed to get the paper off the ceiling in the kitchen:
This:
All this:
This:
This:
Here's the other wall in the kitchen:
This is not a very exciting picture, but I just wanted to show that James had managed to get the paper off the ceiling in the kitchen:
This:
All this:
This:
This:
