In between coats of paint in the bathroom we continued on with the living room. Dennis took off the face of the fireplace. We were going to just sheetrock over the entire wall, but there was nothing to screw the sheetrock to around the fireplace opening, so they had to frame it in.
While they were doing that Steve asked if I wanted the doorway by the backdoor framed in as well. I thought it might be a good thing to do, since I have been wondering how I was going to keep the grandkids from running from the kitchen through the living room and back again. That is one of their favorite things to do at my house is run around the "track". I didn't want the new carpet to get dirty, so framing in the doorway seemed like a great idea. I'm glad we covered up the fireplace and added the wall because this gave us the chance to put in insulation. This wall had NONE. Look at that cute Porter, hard at work helping grandma scrape off wallpaper.
While the men were framing, I started scraping off the wallpaper. The plan was that I was supposed to just scrape off the loose stuff, then paint the wallpaper with oil based paint, then Steve would skim coat the walls. I guess this is the way people deal with wallpaper now so you don't have to spend so much time steaming it off. Once I started scraping off the loose stuff, it just kept peeling and peeling and on and on, the only thing was, what I was pulling off was just 1/2 the wallpaper. It was the "decorative" part that peeled off, leaving a felt backing still glued to the wall. If I scraped and grabbed hold of it just right, it would peel off in huge pieces. That didn't take too long. Then Dennis took down the crown molding that someone had glued to the wall and it put big holes in the wall and pulled off chunks of paint that was underneath the felt backing. I had to start all over scraping the wall to get the loose stuff off. The only thing was, that once I started scraping, the paint and felt backing just kept coming off. It was like the paint had never really stuck to the wall and was now ready to be come off. Once I got to the end of the wall with the wallpaper on, the paint just kept peeling so I kept going and went clear around the room. It took me two days to get it all done, but now I feel like we are starting over with a clean slate for the new texture and paint to adhere to. Dennis and Steve also worked on the lighting and put in a fixture in the middle of the room and two can lights in the hallway. We have wallpaper on half the lower half of the wall in the kitchen and I wanted to take that down as well, since some of it can be seen from the front door. So one night I guess I hadn't had enough scraping and started scraping off the kitchen wallpaper. It did not come off as easy as the living room had. The top layer scraped off from the felt paper, but would not tear off in nice large sheets. It took quite a bit more scraping. Then Dennis and I decided that we did not want to have to paint and skim coat the kitchen like we would have done in the living room as we had just done the kitchen about 7 years ago with all new sheetrock and texture. We talked about going to Timp Rental and renting a steamer that takes off wallpaper. I remember renting it years ago to take off the wallpaper in the small bathroom and it was a very laborious job. I was not looking forward to that at all. Then Dennis had a brilliant idea. What if we boiled water and put it in a squirt bottle and sprayed it onto the paper and let it sit for a few minutes? We figured it was worth a try.....and it WORKED! It really was brilliant, and much easier, and FREE. Yes, at this point, we are liking free quite a bit. Today, I didn't get enough of the scraping, so I started in on the half bath (the same bath we steamed the wallpaper off of 7 years ago). When we redid the kitchen and half bath back then, I had this grand idea of sponging paint on the lower half of the wall. I don't remember what the technical name for it was, but it was all the rage. Anyway, it turned out HIDEOUS!!! So I ran to the store and found some wallpaper to cover it up. Now the wallpaper has been curling up along the edges and looking really ratty, so off it came today. It really was fun, scraping off the top layer, then squirting boiling hot water onto the felt paper and watching it bubble, then scraping it off like butter. Way cool. Now we are waiting on Steve to come and tape and texture the drywall. Then we can start painting. We are also waiting on Steve to get the vanity built. Waiting, waiting, waiting. This winter has been hard on him and his family with almost no paying jobs, so that is why we decided to start our remodel so we could keep him busy. Well, he has gotten two "paying jobs" this past week and has been asked to bid on a few others. That is really good for him and his family, they need to be able to pay for their bills. So we will be patient and wait for him to fit us in. Hopefully that won't take TOO long.
Here's Amanda 7 months pregnant, helping me scrape off the felt backing. To the left you can see what the wallpaper looked like.
The sheetrock up and ready for taping and texturing. 
