this blog brought to you by...

...the Wagner Wallpaper Steamer! If you noticed the room in my last blog post, you might see some rather frou-frou wallpaper to go with the vast Smurf collection. I have loathed, despised, and hated this wallpaper--and all the design decisions of the former owners of my house--ever since we looked the house over. The thing is, it's easy to change wallcoverings, but hard to fix really bad structural problems, and our house was luckily in move-in condition. That was six years ago.

Due to a variety of factors, including the birth of my child, a complete lack of energy and time, and perfectionistic tendencies, most of the walls in our house have the same color scheme (or lack of same) as they did six years ago. D finished fixing up our bedroom about two months before A was born, and then powered through A's room in time to get him in there without fumes bothering his tiny nose. But our room took a tremendous amount of time to finish, since there were huge cracks, an airduct to redirect (don't ask), and my lovely (OCD) husband's desire to have every square inch of wall perfectly smooth. I thanked him for all that attention to detail when A was born, as I was more or less confined to that room for the first six weeks while recovering from Blood-a-palooza 2003. I sat in a stupor and stared at the perfect walls while trying to nurse A, cry on the phone, listen to Nick Drake's Pink Moon, and eat my 200th banana-and-nutella/peanut butter snacks that D made for me. If I had divits and pock-marks from a poor plastering job to stare at, I would most certainly have needed to be checked in to Sheppard Pratt. It was still a near thing.

So back to my amazing wallpaper steamer. Sometimes you get something that is worth every damn cent, and this, my friends, is it. When you've lived with wallpaper that is--no lie--the very same pattern as the interior of a Bob Evans Restaurant, for six years, being able to get rid of it with minimal effort and no chemicals is like an impossible dream. You just hold the steamer plate over the area for about 15 seconds or so, and slide a putty knife under it to release the wall from its homestyle-country aesthetic bondage. And if you're really lucky, the powder-blue and pink-flowered border trim will pull off 8 feet at a time! Oh, ecstasy!

Now the hard part: choosing colors. I think it's harder to pick colors as an artist, because you really have no excuse if they turn out horribly. You can't say, "well, I don't know anything about color!" There are billions of colors to choose from, and they all look different in different kinds of lighting, then there's the other rooms adjoining to consider, and the existing furniture (because I don't think we'll be getting luxury dining room sets with a preschooler and art lessons using the same space). It's overwhelming. Here are two of the scenarios I am considering (kudos to D, photoshop wizard, for helping me with the technical aspects!)

(I haven't decided on trim colors yet either, or anything for that matter...don't judge)

You might be able to tell that I love deep cerulean blue. It's Smurf-color, I just realized (well not JUST, but much too recently to be considered smart), pthalo blue, like Bob Ross enjoyed palette-knifing and fan-brushing all over his paintings. Something comforting about that.

Tell me what you think.