Finely (Finally) Finished Fun

We had never liked the bedroom wallpaper, with its stripes and flowers, hearkening back to the 1950’s. But it had come with the house, and it didn’t seem like a high enough priority to bother with. Home ownership comes with a never-ending list of projects, and this particular one kept getting pushed back behind more pressing ones.

But then one day about a year ago, we couldn’t take it anymore, and peeled off a loose bit of wallpaper. It was our way of committing to this undertaking. Surely neither of us would be able to tolerate a wall with a ripped out spot for long.

Months passed.

Then, in August of 2019, we started removing the wallpaper in earnest. This is not a job for sissies. It takes a lot of effort to remove this sticky, clinging stuff from any surface, let alone a slightly bumpy one. We had to buy special equipment to score holes in it, and a special liquid to loosen the glue, and then we had to slough this muck off the walls. Yuck. I’ll never have wallpaper again, if it’s up to me.

So anyway, then we had a blank, white wall, with areas that we patched quite expertly, if I do say so myself. But we didn’t want to stop there. We had plans for this wall. It was to be a unique work of art. No one else in the world would go to sleep or wake up to a wall such as this. It was time to get creative.

And yet we didn’t. Another 6 weeks passed. Then we finally got some orange paint, called “heirloom tomato”, and some white paint to mix in for variety, and we painted the sunset. I was so proud of that sunset, with its variations in color!

We stared at that sunset, hovering over a white lower wall, for another 6 weeks.

Then, in November, a very artistic friend of ours came along, and after we showed him a picture of what we planned to loosely base our mural on, he helped us out by penciling it in on the wall, and showing us how to tape off the various sections. He then demonstrated how to paint, using a variety of colors on a palette, and he painted the topmost row of mountains for us. (Thanks, Mike!)

That row of mountains, floating all alone, with the sunset above and the taped areas below, were what we went to bed to every night for another 5 months. I began to despair that we’d never get around to it once spring rolled around, because we like to get out and enjoy the sunshine and the wonderful weather.

It took a quarantine and its attendant suffocating boredom to get us off our behinds. My husband tackled the rows of mountains, and some of the photos below show the amazing detail in each one. I did the lake, with glittery turquoise paint which these photos don’t do justice. And I added more detail to the sky.

So there you have it. The project took about a year to complete, but we love how it turned out. And it really was fun, when we weren’t actively procrastinating. Now that it’s done, we can’t imagine how we lived without it for so long.

It took a pandemic, but we’re finished. Finally. Finely. Now we get to figure out what to do next.

Hey! Look what I wrote! http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5

Author: The View from a Drawbridge

I have been a bridgetender since 2001, and gives me plenty of time to think and observe the world. View all posts by The View from a Drawbridge