*grumble* WALLPAPER *grumble*
Yesterday, I spent about two hours cleaning-off between six and eight square feet of wall. Ugh. The paper part of the wallpaper comes off pretty easily. The 100+ year old glue and what I think is even older wallpaper under that is the killer, though. I can’t tell what is under the first layer of wallpaper. It is blue, and kind-of chips off while I’m stripping it, almost as if it is paint. Underneath that is what I think might be older wallpaper, but it is impossible to get a clean sample of it, and about 1/16″ of thick, brown adhesive. This is the worst part of stripping this old wallpaper. After the paper itself is removed (easy), I have to re-score this stuff, then spread on a lot of whatever stripper I’m using (usually Dif, but I’m also trying some of a formula of common household stuff that E.P. gave us). That has to set for >10 minutes, then I need to coat it again and let it sit for another 5-10 before even trying to start removing the stuff. Then, while I’m removing the stuff, I continue to re-coat the areas that I have stripped yet about every ten minutes, lest they become dry. Once wet, if allowed to then dry again, this stuff becomes as hard as a rock.
Yesterday was also trash day, so I carted out a few bags of the 1970’s-ish wallpaper, plus a trash barrel filled with sharp pointy metal bits from the drop ceiling structure, plus some of the ceiling tiles, plus our normal garbage. The trash people are going to start hating us again.
To relax a bit yesterday, I finally finished a little radio project (I’m an amateur radio operator, for those who do not know), and I now have a full GPS tracking system installed in my car, so friends and family can watch me drive around town. 🙂
Tonight after work, I was tired and hungry. I had a hankering for a good chicken sandwich, one with barbecue sauce and onions and lettuce and bacon on a really, really big roll. mmmm. I had chicken in the freezer, so I stopped at a local grocery store with a good bakery to get some huge kaiser rolls, bacon, and another container of my favorite barbecue sauce. On my way home, I realized that what I really wanted was not just plain onions, but something more like onion rings. Not having any, I decided to try making my own. I made a quick batter of milk, flour, an egg, a bit of cooking oil, and some seasoned salt. I had two sweet onions here, so I cut those into rounds, dunked them in the batter, and then fried them for a bit in some regular cooking oil. I’m not used to frying things in oil, so the first few weren’t so great–I had the oil up to temperature when I started, but then it lost about 100deg. F. after I put the first batch in to cook. It took me a little bit to get the oil working the way I wanted, but I had to work fast to keep it from getting way over temperature. I’m not used to frying things like that. I’m sure I’ll be on the ball next time. In any case, the rest of the onion pieces did just fine, and came out quite good. They were awesome on my chicken sandwich. Mmmmmmmmm.
That was pretty much all of tonight. I then spent a little bit looking at Victorian-style kitchen pictures, and staring at our kitchen to see if I could generate some ideas on what we could eventually do in there. Unfortunately, I didn’t get anything done on the living room tonight, but that’s okay–we can’t work on it every night. We still need to have some “us” time.
We’re supposed to get some more snow overnight and through tomorrow morning. We’re trying to decide what we want to do. Jenny mentioned both seeing a movie and going to a train show that is at one of the local convention centers. I think we’re going to have to wake up and see what we feel like doing. I know that I want to spend some significant time on either Saturday or Sunday working on the living room this weekend, so it remains to be seen when I’ll be doing that. I’d love to get one whole wall finished. I started on the big wall first, so finishing the majority of that wall would be a HUGE accomplishment, and will make the other walls seem to go faster. I hope. 🙂
– jonathan
