It’s been about 3 1/2 years since we moved in to our house and today the last of the flowered teal wallpaper came down!

When we moved in, there was teal wallpaper (with small flowers) in the sun room, teal wallpaper (with large flowers) in the dining room, and a flowered teal wallpaper border in the dining room.  It’s taken us a while to get there, but with the entry way project wrapping up and the rest of the wallpaper on the main floor already gone, the border in the entryway was starting to really look outdated, so we decided it was time to take it down and re-paint the foyer a fresh color.

As usual, I forgot to take pictures before the work started, but here are a few from the day we moved in … it looked about the same up until today:

The downstairs foyer & stairs to the 2nd floor.

The stairs & landing.

The upstairs hall

Because the ceiling is so high over the stairs & landing, it was more than I wanted to attempt to do on my own, so we decided to hire Phil (the same guy we had paint the family room and our bedroom a couple of years ago) to paint the foyer.  We were happy with the work he did for us before and, luckily, he was able to start this week.

So, today was the Phil’s first work day on the project.  We knew that it’s a little hard to expect how a wallpaper removal project will go, but the matching teal wallpaper in the sun room & dining room came down very easily leaving only a very small amount of glue behind, so we expected no issues with the wallpaper removal in the foyer.  What we didn’t expect was that the wallpaper would take the paint with it when it came off, which is exactly what happened.

The previous owners had mentioned when we bought the house that they had had the foyer and a couple of other rooms skim coated to repair some damage to the plaster … and it seems that no primer was used on the freshly plastered walls before they were painted.  The result is that the paint never really adhered to the wall, so it came right off with the wallpaper and started flaking off up the rest of the wall.

So, Phil is working now to repair the situation with the paint.  His plan is to flake off the loosest of the paint, prime the area where the paint has come off, apply joint compound and sand to smooth out the wall, then re-prime & paint the final color.  At the end of the day today, Phil had removed the wallpaper and applied the first coat of primer & joint compound.  Here are a few pictures:

Patching the Wall in the Stairway

Upstairs Hallway.

Stairs & Landing

I know that things usually look worse before they look better with home improvement projects, but it was a bit of a shock to us how much of a problem the lack of primer turned into for this project.  We’re hoping with all of the work Phil is doing to try to correct the situation now, the walls will come out looking smooth so that it won’t be noticeable.

Once all of the prep work is done (probably in another day or so), we’ve picked Sherwin Williams SW6247 as the new wall color.  It’s the color to the right of the door in the picture below:

New Paint Color

Even though it’s no where close to being done now, though, I’m amazed at the difference it’s made to have the wallpaper border & teal curtains down.  The ceilings seem so much higher and the room seems a lot more open.  I’m really excited to see the new color up on the walls!

Filed Under: Painting

Tags: foyer, paint, wallpaper removal