Wallpaper nightmare

What's more painful than watching paint dry? Stripping wallpaper.

The plan was to start the paintwork on our house on Monday and I had envisioned a few freshly painted walls by the end of the day. Boy, was I wrong. The living room area was wallpapered, so before painting could start, the workers had to remove it. And what a time-consuming chore it is.

After 3 hours with only half a wall done (and earlier excitement rapidly draining), we realised it was a sloooooooooooow process. If you think you can easily rip off the wallpaper like a bandaid, think again. It's akin to peeling off a price tag from a non-price-tag-friendly surface. Except this price tag is the size of a cathedral window.

Kenneth discovered that adding water helped the process significantly and to speed things up, we rolled up our sleeves and got into the action. It can be rather therapeutic, especially when you manage to peel off a large piece at a go.

Actually, taking off the wallpaper was easy compared to getting rid of the dried glue. That, my friend, is a real b**** to take off.

When I surfed the Net in a desperate attempt to see if there were secret techniques to this task, I found many forums with large volumes of swear words (worse than mine) directed at wallpaper because of its immovability. Nice to know we're not alone.

That's not all. Andre's room had a full-sized wall mural which was stuck on wallpaper style.

It's pretty but no 11-year-old boy would be caught dead with a monster-sized Mickey Mouse on his wall, so we had to remove it. Apparently, this was some high quality laminate which left a thick impenetrable layer of dried plastic-like substance. Unlike the living room glue, it didn't soften in water and the only way to get rid of it was to chip at it painstakingly as it broke off into teeny pieces of plaster and dust. Enough to make anyone swear.

Finally, after 2½ days, the living room was wallpaper-free. The glue marks, however, were impervious to washing or scraping. Our contractor says he can successfully paint over the marks, so we'll see how that works out. Andre's room, on the other hand, has been half abandoned for now.

If there's ever a piece of advice I could give you with regards to home decor, DON'T USE WALLPAPER. It doesn't stand well to wear, it's unsightly when it starts to peel and as we've discovered, it's a real pain to remove. There are many other better alternatives to dress up your walls.

Meanwhile, we're not disheartened - it's just a little bump in the road. We're still having loads of fun and the kids love to see all the works. Due to the dust in the living room, we had to move our command post to the patio. Of course we have Internet.

And there's always something very special about having a meal in a brand new, empty home. Even if it's just Burger King and prata!