Layers and Layers and Layers!

Just a quick update on our painting project.

No, we haven't started painting yet.

But we did decide to do our best to remove all the old wallpaper from the walls. So Kenji and I sprayed a mixture of vinegar and water on the wallpaper and scraped and scraped all afternoon. I pretty much finished scraping the small wall where the medicine cabinet used to be, and Kenji made lots of progress on the largest wall, which is opposite the one I was working on.

We discovered that the bathroom had actually been wallpapered three times in the past instead of only twice. I took pictures of the three wallpapers:

These first two are the ones we already knew about. The pink x's and oblong dots one is the one we think is the original layer. The very pale flowery pattern is the most recent one. I had to photograph them together like this because my camera was unable to focus clearly on the flowery one because it didn't have enough contrast.

The paper below is the one that we think is the one that was used in between the other two. I only found a few strips of it left on one of the walls, so it appears that most of it was removed before applying the new paper. I was also unable to the few remaining strips.


I think the wall that this paper is on was not an original wall. For one, it's the only wall in the bathroom that is drywall instead of plaster. Also, since the house was built in 1930, the bathroom probably had a claw foot tub in it instead of an enclosed tub and shower like it has now.

It also appears that the wainscoting that is in our bathroom is not original. Underneath some old wall compound or plaster or whatever, Kenji found some old tile that extends maybe about a foot taller than the wainscoting does.

I think it would be kind of cool to see what the bathroom looked like originally. My guess is that it probably looked very similar to the bathroom that was in an apartment I used to live in when I lived in Hartford, Connecticut. That apartment building was built in the 1920's, and the bathroom was about the same size as ours is now. It had small black and white hexagonal floor tiles with long white rectangular tiles that covered the walls about two thirds of the way up, with the remainder of the walls painted. It had a claw foot tub too. I think the claw foot tub made the bathroom appear a little more roomy than ours though.