Before & After: The Punk's Room

I know you're going to be heartbroken when you see what we did to the punk's room. Brace yourself. See this lovely pink wallpaper border?

This homey accent that almost invokes the gag-inducing fragrance of old lady perfume?

We... gasp!... Tore it down. Well, this phrase might be a bit misleading. "We tore it down" makes it sound much too easy, like we just grabbed a corner and walked around the room holding the wallpaper, which just came off in one smooth, intact strip. This may be how it happened in our dreams, but this is not how it happened in reality. We were hoping the whole project {taking down the cursed border, touching up any holes in the walls, and painting the ceiling and trim white, and the walls taupe} would take one day to complete. Silly, silly Bells. The punk slept in his portable crib in another room for 4 nights. Four nights of less-than-stellar sleep for the punk, which resulted in interrupted sleep for the punk's mama. That's me.

In order to get the pretty pink border down, we had to take razor blades to the walls. We scraped the top layer of the paper off, one inch at a time. Then, when our shoulder muscles (deltoids, if you will) were sufficiently burning and screaming, we sprayed the under layer, the part that sticks to the walls, with wallpaper removal spray. {Note: This spray claims to work on all layers of the wallpaper at once, but alas. This spray lies.} Then we scraped the softened underlayer off the walls, and then wiped the gooey blue spray from the walls and ceiling. After that, we puttied any holes in the walls, sanded them down, and then painted everything.

Please note, when I say we, 95% of the time I mean the man. The man did most of this while I entertained our offspring in the other room.

And now I present to you the finished product:

We also replaced this frilly light switch cover

... with this plain, uninteresting cover.

The punk thanks us every day for his living space makeover.