Scrape, scrape, scrape that wallpaper

The previous owners of this house had an...interesting sense of style. The dining room had this purple and white striped wallpaper in one area and beige striped wallpaper in another. The entire lower wall was sponge painted with two shades of purple, topped with cheap wood trim to give it the look of wainscotting. 

When we removed the trim, we found leftovers from earlier wallpaper.

The first order of business was to take down all the trim (the good stuff that we are keeping), remove the wallpaper, and scrape off bad areas of paint. That way, we'll be able to tell what parts of the lathe plaster need to be fixed, and what parts need to be removed completely. 

We've got our Shop Vac and mudding supplies all ready to go!

We certainly had our work cut out for us. You can also see in the above photo the oh-so-gorgeous paint job in the living room (which happened to be done OVER wallpaper, so it was doubly difficult to remove), along with the poorly-constructed "built-in" bookcases that we will be removing and replacing.

Halfway done removing the wallpaper

After hours of spraying and scraping, the wallpaper is gone. The ceiling tiles are, too, but that's another post. 

The walls after we were finished scraping the paint and patching the lathe

After removing the wallpaper, we discovered that a lot of the paint was flaking off the wall. This was because the top layer of paint was incompatible with the layer underneath, which kept it from adhering properly. So we had to spend MORE hours scraping off the paint to avoid problems when we repainted the walls. Because this was more than likely lead paint, we had to take some precautions: we wore Tivex suits and respirators while we worked, covered exposed surfaces with plastic, and cleaned up thoroughly with our shop vac, outfitted with a  HEPA filter (even though most if not all of the paint was caught by the plastic).

Tivex suits are incredibly fashionable.