Renovations continue

What began as a simple; "let's take down the horrid green paper and put up new embossed paper and paint a colour of our choosing."  As you have seen what has gone on before this is turning into a major renovation.

I am still working on the same wall.  I think I have counted somewhere in the region of 5 different pieces of wallpaper, a vinyl cloth backing which is the first layer over the many coloured plaster.

 I have since read that this was placed over the plaster to keep it from crumbling and breaking anymore than it already was.  I was hoping to keep that layer intact but it is so brittle in places that it is coming away with the paint leaving the exposed dusty crumbling plaster.  Richard has decided that he does not want anything to do with this process of removing the many layers of paper.  We don't want to take all the plaster down as we still have to live in the house and this is the kitchen.

We had a great idea of exposing the brick corner, the chimney stack that exhausted the carbon monoxide from the gas boiler, hot water tank heater and space heater.   As you know from an earlier post those are now all replaced with a modern boiler that is exhausted out the side of the house through a covered over window.  Therefore the stack is not used and will be capped off sometime in the spring.

Richard decided to take a hammer to the corner of the wall to see what the brick was like and broke the brick so damaging the chimney.

I'm not saying this wouldn't have happened once I began exposing the brick from a crack in the plaster in the middle of the chimney area.  The brick is not very good quality and therefore I have decided we will not be exposing it, unless we find someone who knows what they are doing and would do it for 'just the love of exposing brick'.

 I will have to repair the corner that is broken, there will be many areas of the plaster that I will have to chip where the cracks are and remove the loose plaster and repair before we do anything else to the wall.

As you know our ceilings are 10 foot so in order for me to be able to get at all the paper Richard had to find steps that I could stand on with my whole foot, so I would be safe.  Here are my new steps and yes I have used them and they work great.

So far everything that I have managed to pull off has been dry, at least today.  The second picture shows the cloth material that is placed over the plaster to keep it from crumbling.  From these two pictures you can see what I am up against.  I am determined to removed all the old wall paper.  I think I will then skim coat the whole wall once all the damaged plaster has been chipped out and repaired.  Once all that is done I have a feeling we will just paint the walls.  I've just removed more of this grey fabric material and the mixture of compounds that have been used to patch the walls is unbelievable.  Richard believes we might just have to tear down the plaster and lathe and drywall, but I don't want to damage the other side of the wall.

Anyone with ideas please post notes.  If you live in this area and enjoy this type of work, no money to pay anyone, and know what you are doing, and would like to help.  Post a note.  This is not going to be a quick renovation to just make the kitchen look fresh; but it is not a full gut either as we can't accord to replace the cupboards for more age appropriate ones to the house. 

Renovations - No turning back now!

Since Richard and I purchased this house we have been tearing pieces of the ugly green painted embossed wallpaper off the kitchen wall.  On November 24th it became more serious and I came home to find Richard had torn quite a bit more off  the walls.  Needless to say I joined in and when I had had enough for that day this is what we had done to one of the walls.

 So in these pictures you see the horrible green the the walls are painted.  How badly the walls were papered with the paper not being actually stuck to the walls.  The various layers of wall paper from the embossed, a mottled beige and white, panel design and then the vinyl grey stuff.  Over the various layers that have been partially removed over the years, someone has added mud (plaster) to smooth things out.  The lower half of the wall has painted faux tile sheets.  We are still debating whether to remove or just repaint any suggestions?

We love the ceiling which has been added to replicate what is in the living room, but I hate the type of ceiling covering that over the years has become grey with cooking and just general living in the house.  I can't imagine painting it without taping all the wood so we do not get paint on those faux beams, because I really do like the idea of the ceiling just not the sponge stipple stuff.

Today, December 1, 2012 I once more tackled the walls, using a slightly watered down fabric softener solution.  It did work a lot better than using the steamer but is a lot messier and makes the floor very slippery which I had to be careful walking on.  I made sure that I cleaned up the mess every so often and washed the floor down with plain water.  I did not want to track the mess through the house.  So what does it look like today.  Here are today's pictures:

This is a corner I began and found some very interesting DIY attempts. There was chunks of mud in the corner with paper taping on that then more mud on top.  As you see there is patches of newer mud and then grey vinyl paper under that mud.  In one section it looks as if the original plaster wall was painted a blue/grey.  The black stuff I have no idea what that is unless I chip the skim coat off mud that is in patches everywhere.  The panel patterned paper is hard to get off and then that vinyl stuff is loose in areas; I've accidentally dug into parts and pulled it off.  I was hoping to leave the grey vinyl stuff intact so we could either paint or wallpaper over the top, as it is fairly smooth.

So this is the wall I started with and as you see most of the vinyl is intact but not sure anything will really stick to it.  There are more areas of patching as you see.  Still don't know what to do with the bottom portion of the wall.  Richard wants to just paint it and he doesn't want to help with the wall paper stripping other than pulling the easy stuff off.  He said it's my thing all he wanted to do was pull off the green stuff and slap up some more of the same paper and paint it a more pleasing colour.

In the picture above this one you see the various levels of paper, the green, then the mottled beige, the panel patterned and the base vinyl.  In the bottom picture you will see I have reached as high as I can with a one step stool, I'm not very good on steps but will probably have to purchase a three step ladder so I can reach to the ceiling.  10 ft ceilings do have their down falls and that is they are hard to reach to the top to get the rest of the paper off.  I know Richard is 6' 3" but does not want to work on the scraping of the old stuff.

I know this was supposed to be just a quick face lift but I can't leave a job just half done.  I feel you have to do it right or not even start.  So here are my questions:

1. Do I patch where I've pulled parts of the grey vinyl off and then paper?
2. Do I take everything off the walls including the vinyl and patch the damaged plaster and then smooth the walls and paint?
3. Do I allow my hubby to gut the walls pulling all the plaster and lathe off, then have to have all the wiring checked because I know we aren't going to find anything good in that wall, then drywall, tape, mud, sand, remud and sand some more then put a fresh coat of paint?

There you have it folks what would you do if this was your kitchen?