Sunday, April 27, 2008

The Spring of Bathroom: Part 1

Until today, our bathroom walls were covered with what we believed to be the most hideous extant wallpaper in the known world. Why would one wallpaper a bathroom, and with dull gold, striped paper topped by a foot-wide border of precious pink and purple pansies and finished with fussy crown molding, at that?

Today, we scraped that layer off to find what is truly the most hideous extant wallpaper in the known world: a bright teal and purple fan pattern with silver sparkles throughout. We scraped until our arms ached, and still the walls are caked in dried, crumbling, yellow glue that we pray is nontoxic. The glue becomes gum on our scrapers. In random patches, a bright peach paint mysteriously emerges from beneath the glue, although most of the walls are paintless.

The smell of vinegar solution and stale glue lingers in our nostrils. The peeled, wet paper backing felt like soiled toilet paper beneath our feet. Luna Cat alternately supervised, gave us something to scoop, and napped in the kitchen.

The oddest part is, the bathroom looks infinitely better with bare walls with peach splotches than it did with that nasty mask of wallpaper. The room appears brighter, with higher ceilings.

PS. I found a single, dark hair embedded in one stratum. I briefly considered getting a DNA test so I could track down whoever committed this decoration atrocity and ask, Why, WHY?

3 comments:

Ann Forstie said...

I wish I could have seen that teal and purple and sparkly wallpaper. It actually sounds kind of cool. The pansies, not so much.

What color are you going to paint/wallpaper/tile it?

kStyle said...

There are photos, which I will post here eventually. I actually saved some of the tacky teal wallpaper to scan for posterity. I know, it sounds pretty, but trust me, it's not.

Also, the photos of the Original Bathroom cannot quite capture that feeling of being surrounded by the awfulness.

We're going to paint something neutral, like cream/eggshell/whatever-they-call-it-now.

Narya said...

Wow. Friend's downstairs bathroom has the original tile on the walls--the color scheme is purple & green, and it actually works. Of course, there's no wallpaper involved.