It’s a good long while since I prepared Duncan’s old bedroom for decorating. That’s the bit which I’ve always hated in the past. Stripping wallpaper is a horrible job and no matter how careful I am at tidying up as I go I somehow always end up with wee bits of wallpaper being dragged all over the house by my feet.
Somehow I just couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm to get on and do the decorating so I more or less shut the door on the room and forgot about it, until today. No, I still don’t feel like wallpapering but it just had to be done, so today I’ve been up to my elbows in wallpaper paste. Gordon, our youngest son wrote his name and the date on the plaster of one of the walls when he was just six years old, as other folks have done in the past. It adds a bit of history for future owners of the house, but it has been papered over again today. It used to be Gordon’s room but for some reason they did a room swap years ago.
People always seem to think that cottage style houses are so cute looking with their sloping ceilings upstairs but coomb ceilings are literally a pain in the neck when it comes to wallpapering. It wouldn’t be so bad if I was doing something which I really admired because it’s great when you see a new room emerging bit by bit with each strip of wallpaper which is put up. But it’s desperately boring when you’re only pasting heavy duty lining paper which is just going to be painted with magnolia paint eventually.
I’m taking a tip from the so-called experts and keeping everything really bland and inoffensive so that when we come to put the house up for sale, hopefully next year, we won’t frighten off any possible purchasers. In the past we’ve had a lovely Chinese yellow hall and staircase and jade green walls in the dining-room but for now I’m just going to have to put up with magnolia.
So that’s how exciting my life is at the moment. Duncan’s room is almost completely papered now and after that is finished it’s time to turn my attention to Gordon’s old bedroom. Maybe when they are both finished they won’t seem so much like ghost rooms. It still feels very strange not to have them inhabited by boys.
I hope you are managing to do something more interesting than I am at the moment!
Is Chinese yellow a bright yellow or a pale one? We have a yellow in our stairways and halls that is called Lotus Blossom and is a very pale, candlelight yellow, very neutral but lovely, I think.
Your jade dining room must be gorgeous. I’ve always wanted a blood red or hunter green room. I had a small bathroom once that I painted eggplant / aubergine. I liked it at the time, but I don’t think I’d like it now.
You’re brave to wallpaper. I’d never tackle that. We always paint.
Joan,
Chinese yellow is bright but not acidic looking. I chose that colour because our hall is quite dark because I always keep the front door closed, so it only gets light from the fanlight above the door. Now it’s the dreaded magnolia so we will be nice and neutral when the time comes to sell up. Lotus Blossom sounds lovely.
Blood red was very fashionable a while ago here but whenever I see it from outside when people don’t shut their curtains I always think it looks like a murder room! Hunter green sounds lovely. In 1976 I painted our first bathroom nutmeg brown which sounds horrific but it was a very bright room and it looked surprisingly good. I wouldn’t do it now though. We once had a house with a brown bathroom suite – a complete nightmare!
I hadn’t done any wallpapering for ages and honestly it was a bit like something out of Laurel and Hardy to begin with but I got into the knack of it again, nearly finished, then comes the painting. The walls are too ancient to leave unpapered.