The West Wing Bedroom: All.The.Toile.
On day 1, the West Wing bedroom had grimy carpet, red curtains and all.the.toile. wallpaper. It still has all.the.toile. wallpaper and that’s mostly because I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get rid of it. More on that below…
The carpet was ripped out on Day 1 of being here, along with the hallway, Guest Room 1, Guest Room 2, and Guest Room 3. In this bedroom, we scored with hardwood floors, mostly likely fir since that’s local to the area, that are in pretty good shape. Someday we may refinish them, but for now, they’re pretty enough to throw down a rug and live on.
The curtains, well, they had to go. Since most of the house smelled like smoke, we had to dispose of any soft things. This room has a teeny weird wood window that faces the back patio, a large, newer vinyl window that faces the back carriage house, another newer vinyl window that faces where we park and French doors that also face where we park. With all the windows and doors, the bed goes where it goes, in front of the teeny wood window and that’s what it is for now.
After the success in Guest Room 1 with removing the wallpaper border, I carted my steamer and newfound boldness and went at all.the.toile. Unfortunately for me, this wallpaper is on top of paint on top of paneling. My guess is that when they painted the paneling, they didn’t use a primer, so the steamer bubbled off not only the wallpaper, but also the paint. Leave it to me to go for it on the main wall in the room, and now it looks like this…
Ok, steamer wasn’t going to do it. I gave up with all.the.toile. in here, we got the bed, we now have heat in this room, I put up new curtains on those terrible rods for now, and tried to make the room as comfortable as possible. In the meantime, I’ve been researching like a madwoman on other options for getting wallpaper off paint without taking it off the paneling. We’re not in a position right now to remove the paneling - whatever is behind the walls doesn’t exist unless we pull down the paneling so we can ignore it for now - so I needed a new plan.
I ordered peel & stick wallpaper, “the thickest they make, will cover anything” - all lies. When my friend N was in town a couple of weeks ago, she and I decided to try said peel & stick wallpaper and did it cover all.the.toile? No it did not. Not even close. See here:
The scorer and WP Chomp came, it worked on not only the West Wing Cafe but the stubborn jerk of wallpaper in the kitchen, so I thought - hey let’s try it on all.the.toile! Nope. Once again, I’ve been bested by this stupid wallpaper. These little French countryside people are looking down their noses at us every day. Snobs. They win.
OR DO THEY?
We had a painting contractor come by the house last week. I need some extra hands to help with the smoky upstairs so we can finally set those rooms up. While he was here, I told him all about my battle with the toile, and how it was winning. He recommended we skim coat it, prime & paint, then if we decide to tackle the panel removal project in a few years, this would get us by. Sold.
You will not win, all.the.toile. You will not win.
When this is done, I will report back!
