I ended up mindlessly picking at the top layer of wallpaper in our bedroom this afternoon, and ended up peeling off giant sheets of it. Then I decided to see how the second layer was adhered to the drywall, and lo and behold, it WASN’T. YES, it’s hideous old paper, but I think the previous owners did as I discovered in the other rooms (with the exception of that one wall in the sewing room) and sealed over the original 1954 wallpaper (cabbage roses EVERYWHERE! It prevents russian missile attacks!) makingmy job, 51 years later, that much easier. I wet a rag and picked away, and found that with moisture, it peeled off relatively easily. (Relative to that one damn wall in the sewing room, that had me wondering if we should just relist our house and move on to some builder’s beige condo somewhere.)
And, well, once I started, I kept going. Dave and I just moved the heaviest pieces of furniture into the hall (shitty dresser #1 and cute, sentimental, but way impractical for my needs dead-nana’s dresser #2) and I’ve peeled the top layer off of one entire wall, dug out my depapering supplies from last year, and am giving the DIF another go in a test spot right now. I’m just waiting for the proper amount of time to pass.
ANYWAY. One of the hard parts of choosing furniture. Or paint. Or bedding, is having ZERO idea of what is going on in there. yeah, remember when I had it figured out? After a week, Dave decided it looked like dried blood, and it was icking him out. DAVE. The horror-movie aficionado was creeped out by paint. We’ve been going back and forth on What to Do, and Dave, while having firm opinions on what he DOESN’T like, can’t really ever say what he DOES like. Sigh.
When re realized I’d bitten the bullet and forced the paint-hand, we went off to get more ideas. At the furniture store, He was okay with the furniture, but liked the dark wood stuff better, but not the maple. I had pretty much fallen head over heels for the black stuff, and got the internet to back me on that one, but Dave ended up saying "eh, I don’t care, I’ll only be looking at it when I sleep, so who cares? I’m fine with what we have now." And I hate to be all gender-stereotyping, but really, it was very typical manliness. He also wants the tv, which we really rarely watch (sometimes when I’m ironing in the morning, or the 11 o’clock news, or when I’m folding laundry, or when I’m sick) and is only a 13 inch model — on a flexible wall mount. You know, like in AIRPORTS. I am vehemently opposed to sleeping and fucking in a ticketed passengers only area. He likes to have the TV high, which is understandable, since our bed is so high, and that’s why I liked the chest. But he thinks he’d put the TV ON TOP of it. Sigh.
It’s understandable, though, since our room has been such a chaotic place for so long. I mean, everyone said "well, what do you have in there now? What does the room look like?" and I only half-jokingly answered "crime scene." Really, though, beige gingham wallpaper over a hideous red/yellow/blue diamond pattern paper, so hideous you could see it THROUGH the gingham stuff if the light was right, covered the walls. And there were spots where we’d peeled it back, knowing it was coming down, to see what the hell was underneath. Oh, and the dozen or so color samples splashed on the walls at various heights, some of which looked like dried blood, if you asked Dave. Our curtains are purple canvas-y ones from sears that I got when we moved in because we needed curtains for privacy, and they were on clearance for like, 4 bucks. The bed is a platform that dave made, that is fine, but our nightstands consist of one black lacquer with gold trim (you KNOW the style, picture it with a Tab soda and a Jackie Collins book on top) that is Dave’s, and serves the secondary purpose (or primary, depending on how sappy we may be) of being the step for the cat to get on the bed. The other is a tall white melamine bathroom shelf from Target. It has four shelves with a canvas bin for each, but I removed the top two and use that for books and tissues, etc, and the bottom two bins have other books and um, some adult novelties. Our tv sits on a microwave cart, and on the open shelf are the two canvas bins from my nightstand, one for my undies and one for Dave’s boxers. Behind the doors in the bottom is a cardboard box that holds all of our socks. My dresser is from my dead Nana’s farm, and cute and adorable and has bad drawers for opening and closing and is way too small. That will go into the nursery, as those will be assets and not liabilities for a kid. Dave’s is a 3 drawer chest that was a throwaway from my folks’ condo, and the runners are rusted, and it also has bad drawer maneuvarability, but it will be curbed and not kept. Oh, and we have that one standard 1954 closet that we share, which is okay as far as pole space (I hang up maybe 10 things, but dave hangs t-shirts, but because of my small dresser, all of my sweaters and pants are in a pile on the floor of the closet. My dresser only holds shirts.)
You can see why I’m giddy over the notion of dressers, I’m sure. And since we had that decision, we went to sherwin williams and picked out paint, finally, a more sagey-gray green, with a chair rail, and a very light sagey green for the top. (from the color card, it’s the very top color, and then the 4th one down, if that makes sense.) We also went and looked at trim for the chair rail, and then we came home and I went back to work on the paper after dinner.
So, yes. Dressers. Lots of bad shit in the world today, that I can’t even comprehend, but I can comprehend dressers. I’ll order them this weekend, and set a delivery date for 2 weeks or so from now, which will get our asses in gear to get the room DONE, which is always good. It worked for the guest room, the furniture delivery deadline, and will work for our room too. Yay! I cannot wait.