Progress…removing the old wallpaper (epic fail).

I have admitted defeat. After spending more than 2 hours stripping old wallpaper from one wall in the spare room, I finally came to the conclusion that the plaster underneath is beyond repair. So the wallpaper stripping has stopped and instead I’ll be looking into getting a professional in to replace the plaster, or more preferably DIY it myself. I’ve never done anything like that before. Can’t be too hard, surely?! Might need to get the boyfriend in to give me a hand.

In the meantime I’m moving onto some smaller projects – stripping layers of paint off the spare room sash window and prepping another door for painting. Just need to keep telling myself that every little bit I do is a step towards my goal of a dream (or at the very least, much improved) house!

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Progress…removing old wallpaper.

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I have developed a hatred for wallpaper overnight. My spare room is (badly) wallpapered almost 3/4 of the way up all around. It was always going to go, and last night I finally started the job of removing it.

I soon discovered that there was in fact 2 layers of wallpaper – oh joy. The top layer came off fairly easily, the bottom layer was tougher to remove. I searched the web and used the method of spraying the paper with warm water and dishwashing liquid, leaving it to soak in for about 15 minutes, then using a paint scraper to scrape the paper off.  A time consuming and fairly messy job! The plaster underneath isn’t perfect but is salvageable on most walls.  Some walls however are beyond repair! I think this is one of those jobs that I’ll just do a bit of each night after work until it’s finally finished.

The spare room – a work in progress!

Recent purchases…the spare bed.

The spare bed. I should point out that I’ve done absolutely nothing to the spare room since I bought the house other than rip up the carpet and paint a door. Needs a lot of work!

The title of this post is perhaps a little misleading as I actually purchased this bed in December last year from a guy I worked with.  In a previous life he was a props buyer for TV and movies.  I bought this lovely old iron bed from him for $100 – a bargain in my opinion!  It’s very old (he thought maybe 100 years old) and comes with an interesting back story – it was used in the Ned Kelly movie starring Heath Ledger.  Heath Ledger lies on the bed in a scene in the movie and this creates a great talking point when friends and family come to stay with me.  I love it and it is now affectionately referred to as ‘Heath’s bed’!