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The room that will be our bedroom is covered in a most disquieting lavendar, embossed wallpaper. But not for long!

This is the stuff on the walls.

Phil is a champion scraper.

A tiny fragment of the original wallpaper is revealed.

Even after removing the top layer of wallpaper, the texture can still be seen on the layer underneath.

Renaldo the electrician demonstrates how messed up our wiring is, as a way of preparing us for the jaw-dropping estimate he later gave us.

First dinner party with some very helpful friends!

Ron the lead inspector with his $18,000 x-ray chromatography zapper.

Eep! The swab turned red – means we have some lead.

The question I don’t really want answered: is this lead paint?

lead-paint

paneling-debris

It’s remarkably satisfying to tear that shit off the walls and toss it in a pile on the floor.

Dining Room of 19R apartment 1, “before” (April 2009):

dining-room-19r1-april09
(hey, isn’t that one of the Rear Admirals?!)

Dining Room, 19R apt 1, “during” renovations (viewed from living room):

livingroom-diningroom-19r1-july11

We’ve got a long way to go!

“If it was asbestos, would I do THIS?!*

asbestos

*Of course, it is asbestos. And, he did do that. We’ll be abating it shortly, we hope!

The walls, that is.

Masked mystery guest stripper

The biggest piece of the night

Our little twin neighbors play shirt-no-pants stickball with their mom

1st family dinner

Special guest stripper #2

It’s all about the spray bottle

Pullin’ off the “wood” paneling

Dining room walls are naked – so much brighter already! (this wall’s gonna come down eventually)

Pile o’ paneling

While we still have a LONG ways to go in making the house truly reflective of us, we started the process of ridding the place of Manny’s legacy.

Prying off the wood paneling to reveal the original wallpaper below

Hole in the wall where the china cabinet used to be

A controlled experiment to compare various methods of wallpaper removal

One night’s worth of scraping