Wallpaper sucks but demolition is fun!

The shingles had to go!

 We weren't sure what to tackle first after we closed on our home but the entire home, including the hallways, was wallpapered, except for one room that had cheap paneling glued on the walls.  In the kitchen there were white-painted shaker shingles on the cabinets for that oh-so-hip alpine hut look. 

The night we closed, I jammed to hard rock radio as I took a crowbar to the shingles.  It took a few hours (the previous owners had a love affair with glue, it seemed) but I got it all down by myself.  I seem to have an affinity for demolition work.   Arrrrrr!

Next to go was the wallpaper.  I'm gonna be honest and admit that I actually liked some of the wallpaper designs but it still had to go.  Sigh. 

After a night of demolition

We had never dealt with wallpaper before.  How bad could it be?  Turns out the walls weren't prepped properly and so instead of getting the paper off, we were just shredding the drywall.  We gave up and decided to hire a professional.  We went with a painter recommended by our realtor, who had a team come in.  They steamed off what we were unable to get, skimmed the damaged walls, re-textured them and painted the walls and ceilings.  It cost approx. $6K but it would have taken us months to do what they did in a couple of weeks.

What we did wrong.  We really should have hired someone to get the wallpaper off right from the start.  We did massive damage to the walls and it took the professionals a lot longer to get the wallpaper scraps we weren't able to get, costing us more because we were paying an hourly rate.

All that damage...Yikes!