And the Mess Goes On!
Now, the reason I haven’t posted in the last few weeks is that since April 15 I have been dealing with unpacking all of my things that were in storage, shipped from Houston, Texas.
It all started well before that when I decided to cover the cheap wood paneling that my father installed when the house was built some 30 odd years ago. The plan was to cover the old paneling, rather than remove it, as the walls underneath the paneling were never finished and it would require ripping out the ¼” drywall, installing new drywall, having it mudded, taped, sanded and primed before anything could be done with it. Far too much work, and certainly something I wasn’t personally up for doing, considering new carpeting had already be laid.
I came up with several solutions. The first was to fabric the walls. A very effective way of covering eye sores without changing what’s underneath. So I went to Joanne’s Fabric and found 25 yards of a burlap type fabric (without the smell of burlap) thinking that I could cover the walls easily with it.
What I failed to consider was that the ceiling is open beamed and it would require tailoring the fabric around a multitude of various angles in order to get it to fit properly. And, if any of you have hung fabric on walls before, the understatement is that it’s a bitch to do in the first place.
Scrap that idea, returned the fabric.
There must be another solution I thought. Looking through the cathedral like vast caverns of Lowe’s Home Improvement, I stumbled on a wallpaper that is designed to cover just this type of paneling. It has a faux plaster finish, a perfect solution. Eureka! I felt like I had discovered the Dead Sea scrolls! Considering the amount of product that they have there, finding the scrolls was probably easier. And the guy at Lowe’s told me I could paint over this once it was hung.
Invigorated with a new sense of purpose, I purchased all that they had and headed home to once and for all cover the old paneling! And some fun it was. First, finding the seam match turned out to be quite the challenge, as there is only an embossed pattern, not a printed one, and as the walls are nine feet, as opposed to the standard eight, I was loosing a good 20 inches on every match. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the paneling was not hung to match the wall studs, so where the paneling abutted each other, it was not attached on the edges, only the top and bottom. Over time, the paneling warped a little, which was pretty unnoticeable as there are black grooved edges that masked the problem. That is until you put a piece of wallpaper with a semi gloss finish and made every imperfection in the paneling stand out like a sore thumb!
Undaunted by this, I thought once I got the flat paint on this it wouldn’t be so noticeable.
But before I could even get to that stage, the moving company called and said that they were delivering my things a week early from the date that they had told me to begin with.
Now the delivery is a whole other story. As anyone who has known me for a while, I’ve moved a fair amount in my life, and those who have asked me to help them pack can attest that I am the consummate packer. Never in my 35 years of moving from one state to another has anything other than a piece of china, if that has been broken. Not so with this move, some boxes looked like it was the clean-up after a Greek wedding! But I won’t bore you with all the gruesome details. It was (is) the move from hell!
So, now I was faced with finishing up the papering and painting with my things in place. The wall that I needed to finish first was the one that I was placing my bookcase against, so I can unpack the books. No worries, a couple of hours. Max!
How-some-ever, once I went to paint the papered wall, it started to bubble and come loose from the wall. I thought that once the paint dried it would settle down. No such luck. It looked like something out of an old tenement building. Returning to my Mecca of home improvement where all things can be fixed, I searched once again for the solution. And there, of course, I found it. Bead board or b board or beader board as it’s sometimes called. Commonly used in wainscoting, it is the perfect solution for covering all the mistakes that now both my father and I have made in the living room and works with the character of the house. And, we are going to paint it before we put it up so minimum touchup will be required and all will be well with the world. I pity the poor sucker who buys this house and decides to tear down the b board, only to find wall papered wood paneling glued to unfinished wall board!
Do it yourself, please don’t try this at home!
Now, the reason I haven’t posted in the last few weeks is that since April 15 I have been dealing with unpacking all of my things that were in storage, shipped from Houston, Texas.
It all started well before that when I decided to cover the cheap wood paneling that my father installed when the house was built some 30 odd years ago. The plan was to cover the old paneling, rather than remove it, as the walls underneath the paneling were never finished and it would require ripping out the ¼” drywall, installing new drywall, having it mudded, taped, sanded and primed before anything could be done with it. Far too much work, and certainly something I wasn’t personally up for doing, considering new carpeting had already be laid.
I came up with several solutions. The first was to fabric the walls. A very effective way of covering eye sores without changing what’s underneath. So I went to Joanne’s Fabric and found 25 yards of a burlap type fabric (without the smell of burlap) thinking that I could cover the walls easily with it.
What I failed to consider was that the ceiling is open beamed and it would require tailoring the fabric around a multitude of various angles in order to get it to fit properly. And, if any of you have hung fabric on walls before, the understatement is that it’s a bitch to do in the first place.
Scrap that idea, returned the fabric.
There must be another solution I thought. Looking through the cathedral like vast caverns of Lowe’s Home Improvement, I stumbled on a wallpaper that is designed to cover just this type of paneling. It has a faux plaster finish, a perfect solution. Eureka! I felt like I had discovered the Dead Sea scrolls! Considering the amount of product that they have there, finding the scrolls was probably easier. And the guy at Lowe’s told me I could paint over this once it was hung.
Invigorated with a new sense of purpose, I purchased all that they had and headed home to once and for all cover the old paneling! And some fun it was. First, finding the seam match turned out to be quite the challenge, as there is only an embossed pattern, not a printed one, and as the walls are nine feet, as opposed to the standard eight, I was loosing a good 20 inches on every match. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the paneling was not hung to match the wall studs, so where the paneling abutted each other, it was not attached on the edges, only the top and bottom. Over time, the paneling warped a little, which was pretty unnoticeable as there are black grooved edges that masked the problem. That is until you put a piece of wallpaper with a semi gloss finish and made every imperfection in the paneling stand out like a sore thumb!
Undaunted by this, I thought once I got the flat paint on this it wouldn’t be so noticeable.
But before I could even get to that stage, the moving company called and said that they were delivering my things a week early from the date that they had told me to begin with.
Now the delivery is a whole other story. As anyone who has known me for a while, I’ve moved a fair amount in my life, and those who have asked me to help them pack can attest that I am the consummate packer. Never in my 35 years of moving from one state to another has anything other than a piece of china, if that has been broken. Not so with this move, some boxes looked like it was the clean-up after a Greek wedding! But I won’t bore you with all the gruesome details. It was (is) the move from hell!
So, now I was faced with finishing up the papering and painting with my things in place. The wall that I needed to finish first was the one that I was placing my bookcase against, so I can unpack the books. No worries, a couple of hours. Max!
How-some-ever, once I went to paint the papered wall, it started to bubble and come loose from the wall. I thought that once the paint dried it would settle down. No such luck. It looked like something out of an old tenement building. Returning to my Mecca of home improvement where all things can be fixed, I searched once again for the solution. And there, of course, I found it. Bead board or b board or beader board as it’s sometimes called. Commonly used in wainscoting, it is the perfect solution for covering all the mistakes that now both my father and I have made in the living room and works with the character of the house. And, we are going to paint it before we put it up so minimum touchup will be required and all will be well with the world. I pity the poor sucker who buys this house and decides to tear down the b board, only to find wall papered wood paneling glued to unfinished wall board!
Do it yourself, please don’t try this at home!
