In bad situations, people will tell you things like "You look great!" "There are more fish in the sea!" and "Wallpaper is not that hard to do! You can do it!" Perhaps it's that air of vulnerability - that we all carry around at times - an air that you just need to be told that you.can.do.it. There is a reason I steer clear of things like organized religion and pyramid schemes, because I'm the first to admit - that I'm very easily convinced. Add to that roster now, avoiding perky young women at the Home Improvement store who tell you that they just did it to their own ceiling and that it took no time at all.
When you're needing help with things like barbecue assembly, or in this case - wallpaper hanging - you should send out an invitation that says something like "Come over and see my new kittens" or "Lobster dinner tonight at the new place!" and rope them in that way, instead of heading off the title of your invite with "Who wants to help me hang wallpaper, on the ceiling!!!!!", because - I can assure you - no one will take the bait. Suddenly people are scared of heights or have a lot of catching up to do with their ex boyfriends or if they're really inventive, they'll say that they're "going to see my brother's new floats on his plane" (you know who you are ;) ). But if you're me, you have one or two fearless girlfriends who will work for wine, and are afraid of nothing. Not a thing. Not even Dr. Handsome and I, attempting to work together. That friend is Allie. Carol comes in a close second - she was willing - but wasn't able.
I began the day before. Scraping and scraping and scraping and scraping the horrible flaking, yellow, dessicated plaster paper that was crumbling before my fingers even reached the ceiling.
Did I mention that during this time my two littlest ones decided to acquire a terrible gastro-intestinal virus? Yes, they did! However, I wasn't about to let two vomiting and poopy babies get in the way of valuable work time, so with two Pack-and-Play's in tow, I set them up and placed my feverish babies for a long, Gravol induced, double diapered nap in the room next door, and began my work. Hours and hours and hours later, the majority of the ceiling paper was down, the remainder was pasted and repaired enough to prime out with some Kilz, and then proceed with the re-papering the following day. Tuesday.
So there we were. Allie, Dr. Handsome and I, a length of scaffolding and a 12x15' room with 10 ft. ceilings, a large vat of wallpaper adhesive, 6 rolls of wallpaper and positive attitudes all around.
Allie and I smiled and got to work.
The first thing we did, was throw the positive attitude out the window. Who the hell needs that? I believe it started with the first pffffft that came out of Dr. Handsome's mouth shortly after arriving in the room where Allie and I had begun cutting the first strip of wallpaper.
What a gong show.
Allie and I, up on the scaffolding, wet wallpaper in hand, an unfortunate attempt at making a plumb line across a very non-square room and ceiling, and a whole lot of cussing. With me unrolling and Allie holding it up and smoothing it and Dr. Handsome rolling us across the room on the scaffolding and all of us bickering, it was in our good fortune that the windows remained closed so as not to draw spectators to the sport of what-the-hell-are-they-doing that we were obviously doing so well.
Mid-roll (about half an hour into the application) Allie reminded us that she was going to soon have to split, to get home to her own little vomiting lovelies, and relieve her husband of his duties. Under the time crunch, we busted our butts and in a total of two and a half hours were able to cover about 1/18th of the ceiling.
Not too bad for a first time.
Allie was saved by a phone call urging her to come home from her Handsome one, my Dr. Handsome and I were saved by the fence builder arriving just in time to save our relationship from ending before the paste had even dried.
We packed up our rolls of paper, smoothed a few bubbles, cut a few new lines and washed our hands and called it a day.
*Sarah Richardson is my hero. In no way do I intend to insult her. <3
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