A tale of two strippers

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.