centre of the universe - the dreaming: Stupid Stupid Stupid

09/25/2005: "Stupid Stupid Stupid" To the stupid asshole who put wallpaper up in the southeast bedroom of my house:

What in the name of bleeding Jesus were you thinking when you *tacked up the wallpaper with silicone*!?? It's not like you did a particularly good job of putting up wallpaper in the rest of the room. Or the rest of the house, for that matter. Why take care to make sure that *that particular piece of wallpaper* was set in FREAKING SILICONE!? Every other piece of wallpaper is peeling from one or both ends. Don't get me wrong - I appreciate the fact that the glue you used to put the vinyl shit up was crappy enough that I can peel most of the wallpaper and backing off the wall in entire strips. I like that. Much nicer to remove than the quality stuff they put up in the 20s (that, for the record, you not only wrote on WITH MARKER, but you also put patching compound OVER TOP of it so that even if we'd wanted to salvage it, because it was quite nice, we wouldn't have had the option) that they should, in my opinion, build dams and anti-tank bunkers with. [note: if anyone out there has a ray gun or incendiary device that might take the stuff down, please call]

Now there's the one strip of silicone, about five centimetres wide and about fifteen centimetres long, that I have to peel off with a freaking nail file before I can properly patch the cracks (which you also seem to have used silicone on, but at least you finished it properly and it's flush to the wall) in the plaster.

Also, and I don't mean to be overly critical here, *DON'T PUT WALLPAPER OVER AN UNUSED ELECTRICAL BOX*. Want to know why? Because the people who move in to the house after you're finished your half-arsed renovations might want to take the wallpaper down. And you know how they do that usually? With steam and water and scoring devices. And you know what they find? They find an unused electrical box that probably at one point was the receptacle for a wall sconce, with old dusty wires capped by electrical tape, sticking out about 1cm from the wall, not covered over or filled in or anything. Haven't tested the wires yet to see if they're live; I'm suspecting they are, though.

Honestly. It really doesn't take that much work to properly cap the wires (or remove them, since it's in the upstairs and the electrical is just in the attic above) and seal up the wall. Really. I've done it before. Putting wallpaper over stuff like that doesn't fix it. It doesn't even really hide it. It just makes me angry.

And another thing. Who in the hell puts wallpaper on the ceiling, and what kind of butthead puts stipple over top of peeling ceiling wallpaper!? Who does that? Why, Lord, why?

I guess buying an older house is always an excercise in surprises, like discovering that your attic is inhabited by leprechauns or something. I'm just about at my wits' end, though, with the wallpaper removal. His Nibs has suggested we just drywall over the paper in The Nipper's room rather than peeling the goddamned wallpaper in there. I'm tempted to just coat the paper in gasoline and light a match, but I don't think our insurance covers 'fire cleansing'. I'll check that.

For everyone else in the peanut gallery, those of you who watch home renovation shows, and those 'I'll redesign your bathroom if you promise not to paint my floor puce and seafoam' shows, don't use silicone on the walls. There are dozens of kinds of patching compounds and adhesives that are water permeable so the people who inhabit the house when you're gone won't be screaming obscenities that would make sailors blush when it comes time to redecorate. And for the record, the wall being worked on is the window wall, and the window was open for ventilation, and I'd just like to say that it's *your fault* that those little children started crying and the octegenarians out for their constitutional gasped and looked around in consternation for the steady stream of oaths emanating from the ether.

Your fault.

"Rotten" "Another rant about breastfeeding"

1 Comment

A is for amateur , on Sunday, 25th September:

I was making it up as I went along. There isn't any task I can't figger out how to do if I just apply a litte common sense.
Just like you're doin.

If I can offer my humble common sense opinion, though, just drywalling over everything will make your room that much smaller.

And tape-ending electrical wires used to satisfy the code just fine. Ask anyone. Like Star Electric.

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