shingles and wallpaper!

Hey guys! It has been wayyy too long since I have posted anything! I have been working a lot on the Hispanic Health Fair that my class in Bowling Green is organizing....very exciting but a lot of work!

So I looked at the last post (because I honestly couldn't remember the condition it was in when I last posted!) and a lot has happened since then! They completely finished the roof and shingles so we are leak free!

This isn't the best angle but the hole is GONE!!!

These are two close ups of the soffits that have been wrapped (first in the front and then in the back)

They are still working on wrapping the soffits and then have to do the gutters. We are hoping it will be done by Friday!

So over the weekend, my Dad and I went to the house for a bit and he wanted to take the molding off of one of the upstairs bedrooms (the one that is in the worse shape). Here are some "before" shots of the room (when the house was an apartment in the 70s, this room was the kitchen. Hence the floor):

This is the first initial view into the room

A closer view. Those white lines are where someone was attempting to mud the seams...because that is actually wallpaper.

Apparently some graffiti inclined teenager got ahold of the walls.

The heart is a sweet touch, no?

So that is basically the room. My dad wanted to take off the molding that isn't quite at the top of the ceiling. Once he did that, it opened the seam of the wallpaper (because it only went up to the molding). So I decided to try and talk the wallpaper off. I certainly opened a lovely can of worms. 

First, the upstairs is drywall, which is unusual in a house this old. Houses like this normally have plaster walls. However, there was a fire in the upstairs with some water damage, so they replaced the walls with drywall. On the one hand this is great, because most of the walls now contain insulation (another feature rarely found in older homes). On the other hand, not so great for stripping wallpaper. Plaster is hard and can take the scraping and peeling. Drywall cannot. It came off easy at first, just a few minor spots...so my Dad went up to the attic to work on an insulation situation and left me to finish. And this is the result.

I pretty much tore the wall up! Obviously not my intent, but I felt like once I started, I had to finish. 

And I was taking a picture and noticed blood on the wall.

And then I realized I had scraped by fingers but didn't realize it. Obviously didn't hurt much, it was just yucky, I couldn't get it off of the wall...and of course I received a Dad lecture about wearing my work gloves.

That is a view of the other side of the room. Obviously at some point there was a decent size hole that they mudded and patched up. The wallpaper would not come off of that section.

So my Dad was none to happy about the walls either. He is going to have to tape, mud, and skim over the entire mess. However, if all goes according to plan, the condition of most the walls in this room won't be too important, which is why we started here. I was vehemently opposed to leaving the wallpaper on the walls and having my Dad skim (put a light layer of drywall mud) over it. After this process, and seeing the damage that occurred, I've changed my mind. He can skim over the wallpaper  all he wants!!

Leo, my dad, and myself all went over today and did some work on the master windows, but I will save that for tomorrow. This post is already entirely too long! Thanks for reading!

-Katie