Ridding Our House of Wallpaper

6:50pm - Green Wallpaper Peeling in a Grandmother's House by Marc Shank
Part of the 10-piece "Scurvyville" Series
Acrylic on Stretched Canvas
4 feet x 3.75 feet
Before the Summer of 2004, wallpaper did not concern me. No where in my heritage did it touch me as I never seemed to encounter it. I may have watched a situation comedy about people trying to put up wallpaper in a comically argumentative way. It may just as well been an activity of beings from a distant planet. What a strange custom! Living in San Francisco, home of Victoriania, I only encountered moulding -- never wallpaper.

There was a scene from the Cohen Brothers' Barton Fink with melting and curling wallpaper. It was supposed mean something-- unraveling layers of Hell?

I guess when I was playing "The Sims" which is a computer game that is sort of like playing with paper dolls I did select wallpaper for the houses we built if paint wasn't enough. Even then I think I opted for paint. Walls are supposed to be a canvas where you hang art or have someone do a mural of paint or tile.

Our move to Marin introduced me to wallpaper -- its horror presented itself immediately. What seemed like innocuous floral print wallpaper which came off deceptively easy revealed layers and layers of suburban archeology in paper and adhesive. First was the painted over layer of wallpaper -- who knows what it depicted and who cares? Beneath the next was the brownish duck hunting motif, which must have been from the sixties. Beneath that and the final layer of wallpaper was a teal and pink Dutch Girl and tulip motif. Good God, what were they thinking?

In the dead center of a sweltering Summer, it was just me and the wallpaper steamer. The wallpaper steamer could have been filled by my tears. This was what Hell was like. Heaven is being in a coffee shop while Henry the Coffee Guy roasts the beans. Hell was removing wallpaper.

No one told us that while being a non-toxic, the wallpaper steamer wrecks the drywall. According to wikipedia you can score the wallpaper and use a water and vinegar mixture to get it off. There is also chemicals you can use to eat at the adhesive. I notice that every method I hear about never promises you easy success. When you watch home improvement shows, they edit out the part when they removed the wallpaper. They know as I know that if they showed what you needed to do to remove wallpaper, it would turn people off on home improvement. It is that horrid. All you see is the host cheerfully saying, "After we removed the wallpaper and painted, it made such a difference."

A contractor we know said it is not unheard of just removing the drywall with the wallpaper and just replace the drywall.

It is another Summer and I did have to remove wallpaper in the kitchen, and if I am lucky we will grit our teeth and remove the last remaining bit of wallpaper in one of the bathrooms. Then I will never ever go near wallpaper again unless it is a part of an anti-wallpaper art piece.

"The most common wall covering for residential use and generally the most economical is prepasted vinyl coated paper, commonly called "strippable" which can be misleading." - Wikipedia

Cue bitter laughter.

Kitchen Mini-Makeover

This all started before we moved into the house. Someone made a kitchen peninsula with a bar, but failed at math and made the bar overhang precariously by the back burners. The work-around would be just to use the front burners. This was great as long as the front burners worked, but they soon failed. There were many attempts to fix the Kitchenaid cooktop to no avail. So we have burn marks on the Formica back splash. Finally, the family faced the reality that the cooktop needed to be replace as well as the counter top.

What we will do is to make the peninsula all one level since we never used the bar as a bar. Then replace both the cooktop and the Formica counter. The new counter will be 5' x 3' and the cooktop will be 30" to allow for workspace.

After long research and comparing all the cooktops in person with our largest pots, we ultimately decided on the Wolf 30" gas cooktop. Initially we were interested in the open burner cooktop from Blue Star. With its 22k btu burner, I was worried about whether our kitchen was able to deal with the heat generated and have the expertise to make sure we had the gas lines for it. Then I researched comparable cooktops from Viking, Thermador, and Miele. They were all in the $1500 - $1700 price range. We did look at lower end cooktops with our pots and pans, but nothing looked that good. Our Kitchenaid that we paid $900.00 didn't last 5 years until it started giving out. The mid-range GE Profile and Monogram cooktops didn't really float our boat when we saw them in person with our pots. The Wolf had the most room for our biggest pans we use and had the controls on the side instead of the front. It seemed to be the most solid. We liked the knobs and the dual burner system on all 4 burners. You can turn on the burners by turning it on high to low cooking that would control the top burner. Then you can press down the knob and go into simmer mode which is a feature I cannot wait to explore.

I did the research and Wolf had the best burners. Best simmer. Really strong boiling. The majority of our cooking is boiling, steaming, simmer, and saute.

In person, the burners just looked better -- made of a composite material that is considered to be superior.


At first, I didn't want Formica Laminate. I did order many samples just in case the quotes on solid surfaces (ie. Corian) and Quartz (Caesarstone) were too high. You would think that only having 15 sq ft of counter would be cheaper than $1,500.00 dollars or $1,920.00 dollars for the Caesarstone. My instincts were right. When we saw the quote for Formica for one counter, we figured that we could go ahead and have the other counter done as well. That means that I was unleashed in the color I can choose. So I think I am going to go with the honed Madras Indian Slate (pictured here).

I think that to go with a marble like surface for this kitchen is a little silly. We have a small kitchen, so going with a more modestly scaled slate is the way to go.

The honed Madras Indian Slate also has a matte testure to it that I like. Many of the top of the line HD Wilsonart that I was considering had too much shine to it, even though I liked the design on them. The Madras Indian Slate has golden hue that picks up the floors and the current cabinets. Since the color scheme in the house is blue and green, I appreciate that this surface features green and blues. You can also see wisps of cream and brown. I decided against a light color surface because it would hide stains better. With my light washed maple I figured that it would be a nice contrast.

It is true that I wanted Caesarstone over laminate. It just didn't make sense to do so now when we were not doing a major redesign and we have a son who is almost 7. I can see when he is a teenager and his friends are over looking for food things can go wrong. I would rather spend the money on high quality appliances for now and the near future, because that effects the functioning of the kitchen. This house is going to be in the family for a long time, so we do not have to think about putting surfaces to please potential buyers. If that were so I think we would have invested in a neutral quartz top.

The picture above gave me an idea that we can paint the cabinets this green color if we want to change up the kitchen even more. I really want to steal this look. I am still looking at green paint we can use for the cabinets and a wall color.

My long term vision for this kitchen is to redo the corner by the cooktop where the wall oven and refrigerator. I would replace the oven, when it fails, with a double oven. I would take out the current refrigerator and get a larger one and put it at the end of the counter with the sink on it. This would give us room to replace the 27" oven witha 30 or 36 inch double oven. Then we can put a counter for additional space and put the microwave and shelving there. Where we would put a large refrigerator (not too big for the scale of the kitchen) we can continue the cabinets into the breakfast nook to provide the storage space we lost with the double oven.

What we are doing now I will be sure to post before and after photos to let you in on the fun.