Wallpaper? Who invented this crap?

Wallpaper sucks.

I actually plan to install a bit of wallpaper in my house, it's true, but in general, wallpaper sucks.

I remember scraping wallpaper off the walls of both the Michigan houses we owned -- hating every minute in the second house. The first house, thankfully, featured the kind where removal is relatively easy -- almost like the folks who installed the stuff said to themselves, "who in their right mind will like this after a couple years on the wall?" They thoughtfully made that stuff the peal off variety.

The Woods Road house only had two rooms with wallpaper, one big and one small, but in order to get the crap off I had to rent a steamer and struggle through that process. Those are three days I'll never get back.

But, beware the single woman in a house for twelve years. I say this because men don't care about wallpaper -- until it's time to remove it. Men do not choose this stuff--women do.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not a hater. Wallpaper can be cool. But not in my house. And, invariably, I seem to be the person who has to de-install this shit.

The woman who owned our house until March 8, 2006, apparently LOVED wallpaper. It's in the kitchen, it's in both bathrooms, it's in the hallway, it's in the dining room. I did not think about the consequences of these facts when I bought this place.

I recently began the process of wallpaper removal. I bought the Tiger, I bought DIF, I bought the special Tiger scraper. No luck. It seems I'll be heading toward the steamer rental store soon. The best I could do with the DIF and Tiger was a few half-inch-wide strips here and there on a wall.

There is a chair rail in the dining room. I'm not going to strip the paper below the rail. Instead, I'm going to install a textured paintable paper there and paint it -- then glaze it to show off the texture. Sounds kinda cool but will probably be something someone strips off with distain someday.