When a simple project turns complicated...

So, today I started scraping the down the glue paper on the wall.  Fortunately, the hardware store in Downs gave me an amazing suggestion for Piranha Wallpaper & Paste Remover.  That stuff was AMAZING!  I just diluted it down, sponged it on and the paper just wiped right off!  

Here I am with my Pampered Chef scraper, bucket of remover
and the ladder positioned so I could get to the corner.

At first, I was actually ripping the paper off, but later, I found that by using my scraper,
I had less glue resider to wipe off later.

WOW...look at the clean wall!

It looks so AMAZING...
of course from a distance you can't see all the nicks and imperfections,
so it looks AMAZING!

 So, you might be asking...what went wrong?

Well, after I got all the wallpaper off, I noticed that in one spot where the wall had cracked and someone had tried to patch it the wall was VERY loose.  I mean, I could push on it and the plaster would move at least 1/4 of an inch if not more!  Then a chunk fell out - apparently pushing on it was not a good idea!

So, when Marion came in for lunch, I asked him what he thought we should do.  A simple plaster patch was not going to fix this...especially after further investigation...because the the wall bubbled and moved for quite a ways into the wall.  SO, Marion said, "I guess we need to find out if it is the lathe or the plaster.  Take a hammer to it, but don't go beyond what is loose.  If it is solidly attached, leave it."

So, here we go:

Just loosely prying, trying to only pull off what was 'necessary'.

We got this far and I started to panic!
It was still bubbling and loosely coming off with ease!

Nathan REALLY wanted to help...so I let him!

Then Abi wanted to help, so I let her.

 And we ended up with this:

It doesn't look so bad in the picture.  Basically everything that is left is fairly firmly attached to the lathe, EXCEPT one spot.  And, it scares me:

I don't know if you can really see it, but that middle board is basically splintered in half.  But if I kept going, I would have to pull the plaster off the entire board another 2-3 feet to the right.  And if I did that, you KNOW the hole would be bigger than just the width of the lathe board.  So I stopped and am waiting for Marion to get home.  We'll see what he thinks and how much farther we have to go.

:-)