stripping

This is the wallpaper found under the beige bamboo wall paper in our dining room.  And I am in the process  of removing it.  I'd rather not use something that requires rubber gloves, eye protection, rental equipment, or a particle mask.  I have a lot of recorded books and I am good at tedious, repetitive work, so I used warm soapy water, a sponge,  and a plastic pancake turner.  The papre came off in postage stamp-sized pieces over the course of two days, but now I am at thepoint of a final washing of the wall and then spackling.  I got wonderful suggestions and encouragement from facebook friends.  I still have trouble getting information from the internet because You have to ask the questions it's ready to answer.  When I type in, "How do I strip wallpaper before painting my wall?" I got pages of adds for wallpaper and for wallpaper-stripping products.  When I asked my friends, I got useful, practical advice.

Next - the spackle!

In the meantime, every night, when DH comes home, we take our laptops out to the pavillion and lounge in the peace and the shade, checking e-mail (Do you want to save the one from Don?  Have you seen the one from Tim?) sharing news of the day, and then playing games till the batteries give out.  I'm thinking it might make sense to run an extrnsion cord out there.  Squirrels sit in the walnut tree, peeling green walnuts and throwing the husks down on the pavillion roof in  pattering showers of organic debris. Sunshine stencils leaf shadows overhead.  Crows and scrub jays bicker and yell insults at one another.  Something about the thin canvas wall on the side where the dogs are makes the waft of crap less obvious.  After I get the dining room wall painted, I am going to bring my spinning wheel out to  the pavillion for a few days. 

And one of these days, I will need to get some filing done. (shudder!)

Today, DH and I are going to the fair!  I love the Clackamas County Fair!  It's still an agricultural county, so there are still horses and calves and sheep and competitions in domestic skills.  One of these years, I'll get myself together enough to start entering things again. I took Grand Champion in the cookie jar contest one year with my Ricky Martins -ginger cookies with cream-cheese frosting.  sweet and spicey and teen girls just devour them.  Maybe I could submit some macarons.