This Old Lair...
Bathroom remodeling edition...
Spent most of the morning and early afternoon stripping wallpaper, whilst awaiting the visit of the appraiser. The wallpaper has been up about fifteen years, as far as I can figure. It has grown accustomed to being there. It's putting up a fight, to say the least. It first teased me, with a few loose corners here and there, which invited the idea that once I started peeling, it would literally cascade down the wall in rolls of defeat, having realized it has lived it's useful term and surrender it's place for the next generation to take over. With careful technique, akin to that reserved to removing a bandage from a wound in a hairy region of the flesh, I started working it off. I came away with what looked like a little kitten's ear between my fingers. The paper decided to hold fast, both to the wall and to it's resolve to put up a fight. I do not daunt so easily, so I went downstairs to the scullery and grabbed our big spaghetti pot and manhandled it up the stairway and started it filling with scalding hot water in the bathtub and went back downstairs again to get the wallpaper removers friend, white vinegar. I learned that trick from my parents, who changed wallpaper in my childhood home as often as they changed their mood. I mixed the concoction, grabbed an old towel and had at it, soaking each strip and savoring the aroma of hot water, vinegar and wet paper. It works like a charm, for the most part. There are little scabs of base paper here and there that require deft work with a razor blade to lift the edges and work them off, but it's going rather well. I managed to get about half the room done (it's a big bathroom, thirteen by fifteen feet, about two thirds of it is papered). Peeling wallpaper is addictive, much like eating potato crisps. It's also a task requiring great patience... it most be done in the proper way, so as to not peel off the top layer of sheetrock paper with it. I've been down that troubled path before and not anxious to tred that way again. I have a busy weekend ahead of me, so I guess I'll take up the task again during the coming week after I get home from work. Nothing takes the edge off a hectic day at the office like peeling wallpaper with the right hand whilst holding an ice cold Stoley martini in the left.
So, after the appraiser left, I went out and mowed most of the lawn and a good portion of the back forty. It's looking rather grand out back these days, better than it has in a few years. I can't wait for firefly season to start so I can go sit in the woods while they swirl around me by the millions. I play at trying to pick out which ones are real fireflies and which ones are faeries having sport at playing firefly. It's a grand time on a midsummer night... you should have a go at it yourselves, sometime. Some of the local fay are quite good at the masquerade...
I'm off for a much needed shower and some dinner.
Have a wonderful evening, my fellow wanderers... Fare thee well.

what say you..?