My Goodness, My Guinness: The Dreaded Kitchen Wallpaper

We made a LOT of progress on some house projects this weekend! And we made some plans for a few house projects during the coming weekends. One project that has just been hanging over our heads for the past year or so is the wallpaper in the kitchen... We'd pulled the top layer off a few weeks ago, but the baselayer (the layer with the glue that attaches to the wall) was very stubbornly attached, so I decided to tackle that this weekend. I got a squirt bottle and put some hot water and some fabric softener (Snuggle! My favorite) and sprayed that on a small section of the baselayer, and then I started scraping! It was coming up pretty darn well! The wall beneath the wallpaper had been previously painted (like you're supposed to do before you apply wallpaper!), which helped a LOT. The Master Bathroom had not been primed or painted underneath, so the wallpaper had been applied directly to the drywall boards, so that was a MOTHER to try remove. I'm so glad the kitchen was easier. It still took me like 4 or 5 hours, but the walls beneath the wallpaper looks great! I don't think McGee will have to do much patching at all - just a few small areas that had some weird holes from old shelving or something. Here are some before and afters!

This was when we first moved in... with the old chandelier and the old fridge. But that wallpaper was not our favorite. It had lots of gardening stuff on it, and herbs in the border. Oh and you'll notice that they even wallpapered all around the fridge!! It went all the way behind it.

Another look at the old wallpaper.

And here's the walls now! They will be ready soon for me to prime and then paint!

And here's that pesky wall behind the fridge! I had to move the fridge out (it's heavy!) and scrape all that wallpaper off... It was SUCH a pain.

And there was a border above the cabinets too! So that's down now....

And here's another look at the Master Bathroom when we first moved in:

That's a pink toilet, by the way. And my goodness that wallpaper gave me a headache.

And here it is after removing the wallpaper, repairing the walls, priming, and painting the ceiling (white) and the walls (a green-ish color), and installing a new light! Oh and we have a white toilet now, because the pink was just not good. We're keeping the old medicine cabinet because it's ENORMOUS, and it's actually in good shape (I just still need to clean it up a bit). And we're using the original vanity too, but I still need to clean that up a bit too... and we're going to replace the faucet (it's currently a gold and silver combo... ).

We're still not finished with the master bathroom, but we're getting really close! We still have to put up most of the trim, outlet covers, and replace the faucet and towel bars (they're all gold). We love the light we picked, and it looks really pretty when the light is on (it's like a frosted glass), but the pictures were not turning out at all so all my photos have the light off.

Oh and McGee took super cute pictures of Guinness from Friday evening when we were hanging out in our screened patio after work! Guinness was having fun running around while McGee and I were chatting and enjoying a celebratory cocktail, but then I guess he got tired because he decided to lay down underneath the table!