Wallpaper of Doom! - The Before

A guy owned my house for about two years before he sold it to me, and before that, it had been owned since the 1950s by a couple named Muriel and Ray. The one thing I know about Muriel and Ray is that one of them had a passion for wallpaper. The owner in between ignored some, and seems to have painted over some more (can't wait to find out for sure!) so it has been handed down to me.

I couldn't even think about the kitchen wallpaper with three adults trying to share that little kitchen for a while, so I started with the small, awkward closet-ish space between the dining room and the cellar door. The original layout is something of a mystery. The doors don't add up, and it is part plaster and part drywall, which makes me think it was changed after it was built. I wonder about these things when I should be doing homework.

And I had plenty of time to ponder it as I stripped the wallpaper from hell. Here's how it looked originally.

If you guessed that the long-time owners were smokers, you guessed right! The kitchen is the most recent addition to the house, and that looks like it hasn't been repainted or scrubbed in the 30 years since it was expanded, so I'm guessing we are looking at about 30 years of cigarette smoke. 

This picture shows the view from the top of the cellar stairs, and gives the best perspective on the two types of wallpaper, accented by the enormous cobwebs festooning the ceiling. Above and to the right, you see the shelf and closet bar that form my dining room coat closet. It is not what you would call "attractive" or "functional," but it is mine, and that's something.

(Don't let the floral wreath fool you. It could be years before you see another decorative item in my house. That one was a gift from co-workers at my last job.)

Here, from the top of the stairs, you see that once there were baseboards.  You can also see that the basement door has taken some heavy traffic. I am weighing my options for cleaning, scraping and repainting that beast.

I couldn't help myself. Even before I got the pictures taken, I had to start peeling the striped, more recent vintage, wallpaper.

And I'm so glad I did, because there is nowhere else in the house where the smoke damage is so apparent. Having scrubbed years of cigarette residue from walls, from curtains, from floors, I can only imagine the years of focused effort required to make this space THIS gross.

I couldn't wait to start stripping it. The sooner it was out of my life, the better. So that's how I spent New Year's Day last year. I decided I couldn't stand even the beginning of 2011 with that wallpaper. I'll show you how it all turned out very, very soon.

To Paint or Not to Paint

I just read this article on Curbly about whether painting cabinets is a one-weekend project. Spoiler alert: It's not if you do a good job. No surprise there, but sort of a disappointment.

My kitchen cabinets are...OK. They joined my house in a 1980s remodel, and they are unremarkable. When I upgrade the kitchen, they will be a very low priority. Why is this the only picture I have of my kitchen?

It's not even a picture of my kitchen! It's a picture of how the lumber for my bed was too big to fit in my dining room. I think it's psychological, that I find my kitchen so unsettling that I can't even record it photographically. I impulsively started stripping the ghastly wallpaper and then realized I don't have a single picture of the kitchen as I bought it! I pulled off large, uninterrupted sections and now it is too late. That majestic sight is lost to posterity.

Anyway, I have these dark wood cabinets from the 80s and when I do attack the kitchen (improve lighting, eliminate drop ceiling, paint and please, please, please replace this dizzying floor) I think the cabinets and counters will have to stay for at least a few years. I am toying with the idea of moving the cabinets closer to the new ceiling to open up more space under the counters.

So, do I leave the dark wood there, cleaned and polished? Or do I tackle this painting project? Or do I do something nutty and in-between, like replacing the cabinet doors with something a little more 21st century? The handles go for sure, but what about the doors?

I think it will all depend on how much brighter I can make the kitchen by replacing the single ceiling fixture, raising the ceiling 6 or 8 inches and using a white or yellow paint. Thoughts? Can this kitchen be saved?