wallpaper... (and you thought radiators were exciting)

 I love a beautiful wallpaper; don't get me wrong. William Morris' textiles turned into wallpaper--fabulous!

But.

Wallpaper represents trends and personal tastes. There's a lot of history in wallpaper that should be respected. It can tell you who lived somewhere, what economic situation they might have been in, what their favorite colors were, what cultural trends were prevalent. But, you know, it  might as well be labeled, "this is here to stay."  Once upon a time, I lived in an antique house with wallpaper in the bedroom. In my never-stripped-wallpaper-before naivete, I was determined to change it, and so I started pulling it off the wall. It came right off. That was false advertising. No paper since has yielded the field so completely or easily.

You may guess that we've hit the old-house-renovator's big pet peeve at the farm, mostly because it is so flippin' hard to change. WALLPAPER EVERYWHERE. Let me take you on a tour. I know, wallpaper. But this is also serving as a record of what was here.

First, this is the one wallpaper in the house I like. Don't judge.

I love it, but it's broken in so many places and the plaster underneath is shot from jacking up the house to replace the sill, so it has to go. This is in the west front bedroom upstairs. The red is so much more vibrant and velvety (looking) than the camera captured. I have looked extensively, but can't find a copy of it sold anywhere by anyone. I'm sure if I did, it would be out of my budget. For that, Nate is thrilled. He's not a fan.

But wait, there's more. So, so much more. In that same bedroom,
the closet which was added after building features some other selections of paper:

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Super-cute paper combination, yes? This is the first, but not the last, instance of paper-layering.

Moving into the bedroom behind this one, there is a sweet pink stripe-and-flower combination.

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   In the closet of that room, we find a more masculine-feeling paper,
   which is heavy on the green and tan. This is old enough that I wonder if
   the colors were more vibrant when it was new. 

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  Behind that bedroom is another, at the top of the back stairs,
  and the the paper there is in pretty good shape. It's not staying,     
  ultimately...







​    Next, we move to the east front bedroom. It's another floral print,
    with a different set of papers layered in the closet.

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The upstairs bathroom featured a brown floral:

  Moving downstairs, we have the paper you've seen before in the hall. Evidently, there is layering     
​  going on here too: 

   Downstairs, there are only a couple of examples of wallpaper. The first is the wallpaper in the butler's pantry, and the now-lost wallpaper in the old (demolished) kitchen.

  The bathroom that used to link the kitchen and the front room has an interesting trove of wallpaper, just discovered when demolishing the bathfitter-type shower stall. There were four, count 'em, four wallpapers sandwiched under there. 

And last, but not least, what will become our dining room, with its mural wallpaper. I am sure it was more colorful when installed, but now it's taupe and grey and black, and torn up in some significant places.

But this is what I've waited the whole post to show you. At some point when the house was remodeled, the dining room ceiling was dropped, likely to provide a center electrical box for a chandelier (more on the chandelier later!). We had the box moved to the center of the room, and wonder of wonders, what did we find when we looked in the vacated hole? WALLPAPER. On the CEILING! That, friends, is an early 20th century thing...

I cannot begin to tell you how much I want to take out the "new" ceiling and keep this wallpaper. I love it. I love the idea of it! But. As you can see, it's pretty mangled up in there, and taking out the studs to remove the new ceiling would likely tear up the plaster even more on the old one. So it will have to be our little secret. However, I'm not above putting a  little window in the ceiling so we can see it...

So, that's the wallpaper tour. 

Really, the things I get excited about.