"Labor" Day

After a whirlwind of parties over the weekend that took us to Indianapolis and back, I woke up early on Labor Day itching to start working on the house. Jeff had some office work to do, so I went to Lowe's, got me the new Wagner Power Steam 905 and started stripping wallpaper.

Then, one thing led to another, and I started demo'ing the bathroom. Really it had to happen since we're going to gut and remodel it, and I just couldn't let the things I didn't like about the bathroom — the nasty plastic tub surround, the cheap wood trim — continue to offend my eyes. When I got the point where I really couldn't do anymore until Jeff arrived with proper tools, I moved onto stripping the breakfast room wallpaper.

This room is really where the Wagner Power Steamer proved its worth. I'm pretty sure I've only stripped wallpaper off two, maybe three rooms in my life, but the memory of that chore left an indelible impression. This steamer ate through three layers of wallpaper easily. I still needed to scrap off the paper, but this task really seems to be going about as fast as you could expect manual work to go.

Later that evening, Jeff arrived and we finished taking apart the bathroom. Apparently our house used to be inhabited by giants, because the bathroom had storage over the bathtub that started at about 7 feet hight and went up to our 10-foot ceiling. I really hope we can figure out how to get more storage down in a more usable place.