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.