And the Walls Come Down

This is the peach colour scheme of the  kitchen as when we moved in.  Isn't scrubbable wallpaper from what I can tell.   I am pretty certain the the previous owners were smokers, because of all the gunk I have cleaned off walls, draperies etc.   However, the kitchen wallpaper was stained and filthy and there wasn't anything I could really do about it.   I did clean the cupboards and just getting the gunk off the hardware took me all day.  It was amazing to find out it was gold hardware originally and not black iron as it had looked.   

We knew what was behind this wallpaper, luan paneling.  You could feel it and there were hints of it, plus they paneled the whole hallway in it.  YUK!  But we had no idea what was behind the paneling.  There was more paneling; fake tile paneling, without even tile texture, on the bottom and this on the top.

More YUK!  How do you get such a straight line from filthy to clean?   From this layer, we had to check out the walls.   We could tell there were at least 3 layers of wallpaper under this one.  That is quite normal for an old house.   The plaster looks to be in really good shape, that is until you touch it in places.  It is bubbling away from the lath in spots, to big to just fix.   Hubby thinks it is easier to just take the plaster and lath down and replace with drywall.

A bit of research showed that what should be behind the plaster was shiplap, or wooden plank walls.   Apparently you can just removed the top plank to insulate and a bottom plank to do any wiring, put the planks back and it's good to go.  Pinterest showed a whole bunch of very cool renovations using just the shiplap as the walls.  However,  somewhere along the line, some of the boards were removed, so we have incomplete ship lap under the plaster.  Not knowing what else is there, we have to be careful that Kevin doesn't get into the walls, because getting him out again would be a huge operation.

A bit more plaster removal shows the upper walls are likely complete.  It  is also pretty interesting to see that the original shiplap walls have been covered with scrim, muslin or something similar and the original wallpaper is on top of it.  That too is what research suggested we'd find.   Still, it is a very neat find.

green wallpaper dates to at least 1914.