Work, work, work this weekend. Among other things I started the next section of the complicated ceiling:
Long way to go, obviously. And I’m hoping to save some of the beadboard for the bathroom project (wainscoting around an old clawfoot tub; won’t that be cool?), so this side will be a little different than the part I already finished.
But you know me and my almost-magical ability to find stuff I need for projects. This afternoon I scored about 30 square feet of faux beadboard panel at a garage sale. So If I run out of the good stuff for the ceiling, I can fake it. Just back the bead panel with 1/2-inch of something, nail it up there, and nobody will know.
BTW, here’s a pic of what the above area looked like a little over a year ago. Lovely, eh? See those big blocks at the bottom? One covers a hole in the floor. One covers a giant gap under the front door. Two cover the fact that the rot in that area was so bad that the wall was no longer attached to the floor and just sort of flapped in the breeze.
Speaking of scoring good stuff … remember that beadboard I found in the woods? I had to use the last of it today, the most damaged or difficult pieces I’d been putting off using. That meant in part scraping off decades of layers of wallpaper. The old wallcoverings were like a mini-history. I hated to see them go. I’m guessing this shot covers the 1940s to the 1970s:
The gray paper with the squares and fish and the softer flowery paper (not the obnoxious 1960s-70s flower-child special there on the bottom right) were thick, more like cardboard than paper. The fish paper appeared hand-painted, though I don’t know whether it really was.
The painted layer of paper came off easily, but left a thick, pulpy, cardboardy, gray underside that had to be softened with warm water and removed with a paint scraper.
Any of you old-house people familiar with wallpapers like that? Am I right on their vintage?
I remember that wallpaper in the 50s could be pretty thick; it was stiff and some of it was made to look or feel like material. In the mid-60s I helped a friend redo a room that had wallpaper that was puffed and almost “quilted” with a stiff backing. Right after the war (WWII) they were trying all sorts of things in older houses, even while they were putting up “modern” stuff in ticky-tacky suburbia. “Anything goes” was the catch phrase for awhile, as companies tried new and different stuff, and some went wild trying to emulate European or Japanese looks.
Back in the eighties my wife and I bought our first house which was a fixer upper. The previous owners we learned were not inclined to put in a lot of work on the place while they were there so there were a lot of little issues. One of the issues was with the wallpaper in the basement stairway so we decided to remove it. Over a long weekend we stripped off a total of seven layers of the stuff including a layer that was a bright metallic silver. To this day whenever my wife mentions doing something with wallpaper my instant response is no regardless of the merits.
I have a friend that would have a project going….no matter what, and the more challenging…the better! Great work you are doing Claire.
The thick cardboardy paper used to be called “builder’s paper” in my area. It was basically put up to seal off the wind that might come through walls that were none too wind-resistant. People then papered over it with nicer paper. A lot of the houses that were built during the depression here wound up with builder’s paper since none could afford a really nice house.
You know what they say, “no rest for the wicked” –
That is going to look sooo good when you are finished.
Clever book store signage:http://www.buzzfeed.com/katieheaney/21-bookstore-signs-that-capture-the-joy-of-reading#.yc3aO9k0wx
Mary — Bingo! I think you’ve got it. I’d never heard of that, but it makes sense.
I was ASS-U-Meing that the found beadboard was used decoratively, but I should know better. Quite possibly, it was simply the wall material and something like “builder’s paper” might have gone over it as a type of insulation. I’ll check that out further.
OTOH, this is nothing like what’s called building paper now. Not tarpaper or felt. It’s definitely cardboard-like. Pulpy. Not permeated with asphalt or anything else.
The politically correct “Lord Of the Flies”. How this managed to be published in the New Yorker is a bit mysterious to me. http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/politically-correct-lord-of-the-flies?intcid=mod-most-popular