Saturday, July 12, 2008

Stripping for Dummies

Stripping wallpaper is not that hard. Really. Alex, Nathan and I took down the wallpaper that was covering 2 complete walls in Andrew's old room in about 2 hours. I was very happy that I didn't need to go to Home Depot for any supplies. I even had the gel stuff. I would take a picture, but Steve took my camera to Utah this week.

Tools:
  • paper tiger (see picture above)
  • plastic scrapers
  • wallpaper removing gel
  • paint roller (to apply gel)
  • paint tray
  • screwdriver to remover outlet cover.

Directions:

  • show son how fun the paper tiger is to use.
  • show other son how easy it is to remove outlet covers.
  • roll gel onto a section of the wall (about 4 feet wide)
  • show boys how fun it is to pull the paper from the walls...

It's a little like Tom Sawyer whitewashing a fence.

"Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to sing it with - and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling wealth. He had, besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jew’s-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spoon cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar-but no dog - the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated window-sash.He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while - plenty of company - and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the village."

4 comments:

Rob Dominguez said...

"slaughter of innocents"--that about sums up getting children to work and like it.

That's what we did with Jonah this morning when we cleaned the chapel.

Rob Dominguez said...

Oh, this is Keira btw, I'm logged in as my brother-in-law.

Stephen said...

Tom Sawyer would make a great dad.

I'm glad I have you to show the kids the joys of work.

Mad Runner said...

Love it! I have shown my kids that vacuuming and dusting are much fun! We're working on cooking being very interesting if you get to make things YOU like. I wasn't thinking Tom Sawyer but now I will!!!