child labor...

I don't mean the kind that involves "breaking your water" and a new baby...(although that is constantly in the back of my mind now days) in case you were confused about the title :) No, I'm talking about the kind that involves sweat shops, walmart, children working for free etc... My kids like to think that whenever they do an extra job around here that they deserve something in return- money, treats, a night out at the movies etc... We tell them that work is just part of life and helping is part of being in a family blah. blah. blah. but I must admit that after this job I sort of felt the same way... I wanted a reward too... because well, it was super HARD and dirty!! Ever see that show on the Discovery channel called Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe?... He goes around doing all these hard usually gross jobs that most people don't even know exist! I love the show and I'm telling you I've been thinking about submitting this job... When I say what it is you might not believe me... because it sounds fairly simple... So here it is... We've been peeling off wallpaper. I know, I know it doesn't sound that bad but unless you've done it, you just don't get it... so let me explain. We have two rooms in the basement, one is our guest room, the other one we have been using as our toy room. But with the new little bundle on the way we decided we'd move the big boys downstairs and that meant moving things around and fixing things up a bit... so here's what it took...

Wall paper is put on a wall with glue or comes with an adhesive back... that is how it sticks on! I'm not sure how it is made now days but back when this wallpaper was put on I think the glue must have been better than "gorilla glue" you know the kind that isn't made to un-adhese? the kind that holds metal and makes it though a tsunami... that's what we were looking to peel off. First we had to wet the paper border A LOT and after lots of scraping, prying, and scratching the first layer came up about 1/8 of an inch at a time and then we'd re-wet that area hoping to losen the next 1/8 inch piece. But that is not all... that my friends is only the FIRST layer and only the PAPER. under that pretty sports paper comes a layer of brown paper and under that is a layer of bionic glue... after hours of getting through those layers, we realized that before this lovely sports border was put up there was a vehicle/transportation paper border up first. the sports border was just placed on top of it. So we are talking about layers and layers. Each little piece that we peeled off was just thrown about the room in frustration...
glue + water = sticky. we had it in our hair, on our clothes and didn't think that if if hit the lower wall or base board that it would re-stick itself and we'd be scraping there too! but wallpaper is a beast and it did re- stick which just gave us more work!! I seriously went into this job thinking it would be a 2 hour project um, no... try two weeks with about 2 hours spent everyday sitting, aching, cursing, scraping!!!

The boys were all excited at first because this was going to be their "new room" and the thoughts of using a spatula to scrape on the wall sounded fun... I agreed until we started! spatula's didn't even begin to work... thank heaven for pampered chef pan scrapers they saved us, but getting a grip on those little things was the trick. My fingers have just now started to get some feeling back in them and it's been a good month since we finished. Evan and Eli are just the right height for the job and really did help me a lot when they weren't complaining :) When we finally finished the scraping and the clean up I was DONE with the room. Glen patched the holes, slapped on some primer, taped and re painted! It looks amazing and we are planning on moving the boys in this weekend here are some before pictures...

and hopefully I''ll get around to some AFTER pictures... I guess the after is the reward huh?

P.S. although wallpaper is the new rage according to some top designers/decorators. Take my word for it and only put it up if you NEVER plan on having to take in down :)