Remodeling Tips We've learned along the way! (mostly the hard way)

Here are just a few things that we've learned along the way! 

Tip #1 - Removing Wallpaper

When we first moved into our house I was 9 months pregnant, it was exactly 10 days before I gave birth to our youngest son.  AND there was wallpaper EVERYWHERE.  There was a border in the living room, which carried into the hallway, into the dining room which turned into all walls covered in it.  It was crazy!  It all needed to go ASAP.  

So I did some research and found that the regular wallpaper remover you would buy in Home Depot or Loews was very toxic and NOT good for me to be inhaling.  Even the ones that say Non-Toxic on the bottle are still not good.  So I was on a mission to find something I could use while pregnant (because there was no way I was waiting till after I had the baby to remove this stuff).  

After a few Google searches I came across one site that suggested Fabric Softner.  I thought, hmmm I have some in the basement, Let's try it. 

They suggested using a spray bottle, filled with 1/4 fabric softner and the rest hot/warm water.  So that's what I did.  

Working in small sections seemed to work better.  Soak the area pretty good with the fabric softner/water mixture, then let it sit just like you would the toxic stuff.  I did not score the walls.  After about 15 minutes I just started scraping and BAMM it actually worked   amazingly.  I was so happy... I had all the borders down in no time.  The dining room took me about a day to do and another day to clean the walls.  But that is only because there were multiple layers of wallpaper in our dining room.  

Tip #2 - Priming & Painting after Removing Wallpaper

This we definitely learned the hard way.  I thought I had those walls cleaned very well after removing all the wallpaper.  Clean then as well as you can, washing and scraping to make sure you get all the glue off.  

When it's time to paint, make sure you use the nasty smelling stuff, Oil-Based Drywall Primer.  Make sure you ventilate the area because this stuff stinks.  

Water-Based Primer is NOT good because if there is some glue left behind the primer will not adhere then when you paint your final color the color will literally bubble up and peel away.  Believe me this is horrible. 

This happened to me after I painted all my perfect stripes.  I had to re-do the entire room.  I definitely cried for a few hours.