Officially Wallpaper Glue Free! [Dining Room Progress]

We’ve hit another milestone in our restoration of the dining room! Remember those awful 4 layers of wallpaper we had to scrape away and send back to the abyss whence it came?

…and then being left with walls of wallpaper glue to wipe off? (learn the method we found worked)

Well, if this were a video game, we would have “house achievement unlocked” flashing on our screen, because at last our walls are glue-free! Let your eyes drink in how great that raw lath plaster looks (a far cry from how it used to look)!

We’re gonna bask a few more moments in this feeling of accomplishment before acknowledging that we need to figure out how to repair horse-hair plaster.

The walls are in amazing shape for their age and especially after holding all that weight of the shelving all these years. However, there’s a few different kind of repairs we’re going to have to address (and research!):

First, and probably the easiest are the holes where the built-ins were held in by nails that we need to fill in.

…then there’s a hairline crack on the left side we may have to re-adhere to the lath before it becomes worse…

…chunks next to the window and in the corners that need filled back in…

…and a few semi-big holes that we can see all the way back to the lath that we frog-taped over for the time being.

Seriously though, I think we’re ready for the challenge. Not to mention, look how much has been accomplished in this room already!

• take out shelving and radiator enclosure
• take out wood border around ceiling
• strip all 4 layers of wallpaper
• get glue off plaster
• repair plaster
• sand and refinish floors
• strip paint off baseboards
• patch baseboards
• take wires out of baseboards
• re-stain corner baseboards to match rest of room
• paint walls
• install crown moulding

We’ll be sure to share our findings on plaster repair as we tackle it!

Any fellow plaster people out there? Got advice? Comment away! :)