Blue Room

Remember this? Dirt from the adobe wall was pouring out from under the beloved silvery-blue wallpaper I had admired throughout my childhood. It was going to have to come off.

So, we knew there were some deterioration issues in the blue room, especially on the east wall in the area of the closet and under the stairway.

The cleared out room. Trent begins to demo the closet.

Meanwhile I am removing the famous silvery blue wallpaper down to the original earthen plaster.

Here you see how the front northeast corner of the house has really settled and there are cracks in the exterior stucco and a vine coming through. Here you can also see how the original floor boards were once painted red.

For the record, Trent in a good sport and actually doesn't mind doing these projects. He also likes hanging out in Ephraim because it's a nice change from the studio in SLC.

Don't you love finding all the wallpaper under the wallpaper? Here you can also see that the ceiling used to be painted salmon pink! I think Jennie was partial to salmon pink.

See the previous patch job under the window and the way the adobes start to have holes toward the corner?

Here you see the construction: the adobe bricks with mud plaster in between, multiple coats of earthen plaster and then traces of the white-wash or lime-wash that was the original protective and decorative wall finish.

See the daylight coming through from a crack in the exterior? Yikes!

Living Room Walls

Originally, I had planned on scraping, patching, and prepping the living room walls for paint.

But as I got into it, I realized-as a professional painter-that I could not in good conscience just re-paint. The walls needed serious work, and I wanted to make a real improvement.


The ceiling was in the worst condition, and I knew from an exploratory hole, that the old plank ceiling-like the ones in the bedrooms-was underneath a layer of plastered metal lath and chicken wire.


Here Trent is scraping away layers of wallpaper.




I bought a Wagner steamer at Home Depot for around $50, it worked beautifully to strip off the layers.


There were four to five layers of wallpaper, with two different borders. I saved pieces of each layer if you are interested in going on a trip down memory lane!