SECOND FLOOR: peeling back the layers

What you are looking at is a plywood wall made to look like wood paneling on the bottom and wallpaper on top, edged with various types of "molding." Each time I look back at these pictures I'm amazed to think that the upper level was our favorite part of the house.




A closer look at the fancy faux-wallpaper paneling.


This shot of the study captures the acoustic tile ceiling that graced the upstairs (except the master bedroom thank goodness!). This was one of the first things to go. Fortunately for us, there was no asbestos and even more exciting was the wood slats we discovered underneath all the layers.

We filled many trash bins during those first few days.

These next two pictures are of the nursery. Turns out our nasty paneling was covering up a darling vintage wallpaper print.
Sadly the wallpaper was too damaged to keep. So we kept ripping things down until we arrived at...

Wood. Just plain, sturdy wood.
I may be wrong, but I don't think they build houses this way any longer.

The wood stayed for a long time. We called the upstairs our log cabin and really quite liked it. The biggest downside was that the walls were covered with nails. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. They needed so many nails because that's what held up all the paneling. Anyway, all these nails would attack if I strayed too near the wall or tried to cut corners.

After a while of living in the cabin, my mother came to visit and she taught us the ways of wallpaper (because that's the only thing we could think of for the wood). The walls are too rough to put wallpaper directly on them, so we put up this thick white backing paper that is supposed to help the final wallpaper go onnicely.(see picture below). We don't know yet because we haven't found any wallpaper that 1)we like and 2)is affordable for this large of area. So everything is just white. The study and the nursery have white wallpaper only on the walls because we wanted to keep the exposed wood ceilings. Those we painted white and it's a cute rustic look.

By the way, Chris hates putting up wallpaper. That's probably because trying to wallpaper all the crazy angles and slanted lines of that hallway ceiling is a living nightmare. I try to tell him that normally it's not so bad...he doesn't believe me.