What Goes Up, Must Come Down

Good Morning, Reader! Unless you're reading this at some other time, and then Good Afternoon or Good Evening. As you will.

Since we planned our housewarmer and invited folks over, there's no more fooling around at Chez Bang Bang. We have to Get Stuff Done, stat. 

So I started to get the upstairs bathroom ready to be cute-ed up, and oye, what a chore. It was just a simple border, Reader, pasted on around the top of the wall.

A horribly unattractive simple border, in some sort of dark colors & patterns, and it had to go as that does not fit with my design dreams for the Cape Cod. I'm going for a more cottage-y feel, not dark Aztec prints. 

So it had to go. 

And then I wanted to cry a little, as it did not peel off nicely, but rather came off in little triangular shards. 

It was holding onto that wall for dear life. 

"No problem," I told myself. "I'll just get one of those Tiger things that you use and it'll come right off." Tricked myself into thinking I just needed the right tools, and the job would be a cinch.

So I bought the Tiger scorer, the Paper scraper, the Dif soaking solution - all of it. And went to work on that border.

First, let me tell you, the Tiger isn't completely honest in it's claim, "WON'T DAMAGE WALLS." Because it harmed my wall in one area, when I accidentally ran it off of the paper. You could call that a user error, but really, they should account for the novice and claim, "MAY harm your walls if you're sort of an idiot-user who gets really aggressive making the circles and runs the tool off of the paper and onto your wall."     

This claim right here in the corner? It's a lie. 

That would have been nice to know, and I may have been more inclined to be a little more gentle. So now I have an area of my wall that looks like this. 

And then there's the claims of the Paper Scraper in bold, blue block letters "PREVENTS DAMAGE TO WALLS." 

Oh, you jokster, you. 

A simple little "May" in front of the "PREVENTS DAMAGE blah blah" may have provided a little bit of warning. Maybe. 

At least I wouldn't have been so surprised when parts of the wall chipped off.

Oh, Previous Homeowner, why ya gotta did me this way?  First the contact paper in the kitchen cabinets that eventually won the war and gets to continue to live there, and then this simple little border. 

It did make me reconcile to keeping the pale roses border in the basement bathroom. It can stay. It's a tonal white and pale colors, it's not worth the battle. 

The thing with home projects is, once you start - even the simplest little start - you're pretty much committed to completing the project in some manner. It's not like I could have stopped with the wallpaper border after the first initial rip and decided it's not that ugly after all. Nope. In for a penny, in for a pound.  Because believe you me, Reader, I thought of a lot of ways I could spin the half-torn-down wallpaper into a "this is our design vision" story, and I couldn't think of a way to pull it off. So I continued to pull it off. 

Once I finish removing the rest of the tacky residue, it's going to be painted a nice gentle color.  A color that somewhere down the line, in oh, say 20 or 30 years, when another new homeowner buys Chez Bang Bang, they say to each other, "What was she thinking with this hideous color?!" And I'll leave a little note on the wall with a "Hey, at least it's not wallpaper. You're welcome."