New York Renovator

Wow. This is a tough project.

The Hubs and I put wallpaper in the ceiling shortly after we moved here, 13 years ago. That was… well, 13 years ago. I was 13 years younger! Ugh, it’s a tough, tough project. My daughter and I are doing all the labor. After a very shaky start (the wallpaper wouldn’t stick to the ceiling), we finally got things going.

The seams are still wet. When it dries, they will be invisible. I'll be painting the ceiling, too!

The wallpaper is embossed. It simulates a tin ceiling (the original tin ceilings from the early 1900s are still in the garage, too– it was the old kitchen before it was the garage). I like it because it hides the wavy Sheetrock. It’s hard to Sheetrock and spackle the joints on these ceilings and walls. Nothing is straight or plumb. The wallpaper hides a lot of the flaws. And wallpaper adds a touch of whimsy and charm, I think.

I purchased the pre-pasted wallpaper, but after wetting the adhesive, it was BARELY tacky. It was like the insipid adhesive on an envelope. NO WAY was it going to hold the weight of such heavy paper, 9 feet up. And it didn’t. :S It all came crashing down.

So I went to my local local home improvement store (not the Big Box. but the “local” one, Jay-K), and the guy there was incredibly helpful. He gave me some paste, told me how to dilute it, and it WORKS! The stuff is amazing.

Moral of the story: skip the pre-pasted junk. Use wallpaper glue in the can.

So we’ve halfway done. I wanted to get more done, but I had tech problems (no Internet on a Friday night after 5pm, grrrreat) and had to solve that. An hour later, we didn’t have the heart to continue. We’re pooped. This is really strenuous work!

I made some scaffolding. How do you like it? It suits me fine– I like heights– but my daughter is a little uneasy.

It’s quite sturdy, but oh is it heavy to move. :S

I can’t wait until all this tough labor is done. I’m getting too old for this…

This house was built in 1855, and it has seen very little renovation since then (except for a horrifying kitchen redo in 1970 and a tsunami of wall paneling from the 1960s). I like to open up the walls and ceilings, here and there, to see what’s behind. (Any excuse to ditch that lousy wall paneling)

A few summers ago, I took down the sagging, water-laden drop-ceiling panels from my garage (we’d sprung a leak in our garage roof that year), and found an old tin ceiling above. Wow! It was beautiful!

Unfortunately, very little is salvageable. It has a lot of rust and water damage. I peeled off a few panels but they cracked when doing so. So far, most of the old tin ceiling remains in place; I’ll probably take it all down when I renovate the garage into a family room or something.

The garage used to be a kitchen, way back when– before they had cars, lol. There are still remains of the very old wallpaper from the late 1800s behind the 1960s paneling. It’s like stepping back in time! There are several layers, and some of the old wallpaper is flocked, or has gilded, hand-painted flecks, and such.

I like the tin ceiling effect. I was disappointed that I couldn’t reuse the pressed tin from the garage. I have a very large dining room, and I wanted to “do up” the ceiling with tin. But the tin is way beyond my budget. I got this bright idea to use textured wallpaper on the ceiling, to simulate pressed tin.

I did this several years ago (WHAT A JOB that was! You think it’s hard hanging wallpaper on walls, lol! Try a ceiling! It will burn fat faster than you can say “Leptovox.” Thankfully, ithe job was made easier when I got some helpers involved). So several years later, the wallpaper is holding up remarkably well!

My dining room is a beautiful, warm ruby red. The deep dark color helps to stabilize the room, because this room has four windows and six doors. It’s a busy room. I painted the wallpapered ceiling with just a whisper of pink paint. The room glows.

That green garland you see is my makeshift crown moulding (which is on my To Do List yet). The garland is wrapped around the perimeter of the room to hide the ugly wallpaper seams against the top of the wall. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing. And it’s cheap!

So if you have a hankering for those nice old pressed tin ceilings but can’t afford to cough up the big bucks, try textured wallpaper. I just love the effect, and everyone comments how nice it is.