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Little Brick Cottage: More Surprises!

So remember how excited I was to find the old oak plank flooring under the kitchen linoleum? That was a really sweet surprise. Well I found another sweet surprise…

This was the dining room before we did anything:

It had carpet and this floral striped wallpaper.  We removed the carpet and pad to find a maple floor in okay condition. For the walls I was thinking that I would just paint over the wallpaper, which is actually fairly commonly found in old houses because wallpaper didn’t have vinyl in it, and the old rough plaster walls were made smoother with the paper. However, it only is a good idea to paint over wallpaper if the paper is very well adhered to the wall, and even then you have to be careful because the paint on it can dampen the paper and cause it to fall off.

The other day I was looking closer and realized the paper was split and gapping a couple inches from the baseboard in one spot in the dining room. I went to examine it closer and found a secret hiding behind that gap. With a little work, this is what I uncovered:

Below the 1970’s floral wallpaper is another layer of wallpaper, the white and green paper that looks to be probably from around the 30’s or so, then below that, is what at first seemed to be plaster, but because it was cracked and peeling in a tiny spot, I was able to chip it away and uncover below it the original beadboard from over 130 years ago.

At some point in the history of this house an owner must have decided that the beadboard was too dated, and instead of tearing it out, they removed the chair-rail trim and just skim-coated over the beadboard to fill the grooves in it and then wallpapered over that.

So today I went to the little brick cottage with a couple of different putty knife type scrapers and a spray bottle of vinegar water in hand. As I kept spraying, and letting the water penetrate into the skim coat, it would, with some strong encouragement from my putty knife, give way in tiny little chips. Here is the same wall with a little (well actually a LOT) more work:

It’s plaster above the beadboard, and you can see where the chairrail trim used to be. It will be a lot of work to finish the whole room, but how can I possibly even consider not doing it? Right there before my eyes is a wonderful treasure hiding just behind a few layers. I hope it’s all intact, but no way to know for sure until I get the skim-coat off and expose it.

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Welcome to Simple Decorating Tips! I’m Liz, the author, and I’m so glad you’re here!

My goal is to encourage you with DIY tips, techniques and tutorials so you feel empowered to join in the fun! Along with this DIY blog, I have a DIY shop, Redo Your Furniture!
The shop is stocked with amazing DIY products! Fusion Mineral Paints, ReDesign Transfers, Decoupage, Waxes, loads of DIY Goodies and more! Even if you're not close to where the shop is in Wisconsin, good news... I ship nationwide, (USA) daily! Check out the link here and let's get your DIY on!
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Welcome to Simple Decorating Tips! I'm Liz, the author, and I'm so glad you're here! My goal is to encourage you with DIY tips, techniques and tutorials so you feel empowered to join in the fun! Along with this DIY blog, I have a DIY shop, Redo Your Furniture!
The shop is stocked with amazing DIY products! Fusion Mineral Paints, ReDesign Transfers, Decoupage, Waxes, loads of DIY Goodies and more! Even if you're not close to where the shop is in Wisconsin, good news... I ship nationwide, (USA) daily! Check out the link here and let's get your DIY on!


Disclosure Policy: According to FTC guidelines, I want you to be aware that some of the content of this blog may be a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post. Thanks for reading along, Liz

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Sharing is great! Please feel free to share this blog with your friends, as well as on Facebook and Pinterest and Flipboard and Houzz and YouTube the more the merrier! I appreciate you stopping by. But please remember that all photos, images, text and content are owned by SimpleDecoratingTips.com. So anything you share, please be sure it always links back to my original post it came from. Please do not remove watermarks, crop or edit anything without written permission from me first.

Disclosure Policy: According to the FTC guidelines, I want you to be aware that this blog is a source of income and may occasionally incorporate endorsements or testimonials and shopping links. It is important to me to disclose this to you. The content of this blog is a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. Products provided to me by my advertising partners for my review are given to me free of charge with no cost to myself. This does not ensure a positive review of the product in any way. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and always make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post. Thanks for reading along, Liz

Disclosure Policy According to Federal Trade Commission guidelines, I want you to be aware that this blog is a source of income and may occasionally incorporate endorsements or testimonials. It is important to me to disclose this to you. The content of this blog is a source of income and therefore may be used to promote products, services, or other businesses. I will only choose to promote products/services/businesses that I feel will be beneficial to my readers. Products provided to me by my advertising partners for my review are given to me free of charge with no cost to myself. This does not ensure a positive review of the product in any way. My truthful opinion will be what I state, no matter if I'm getting paid or not. Accuracy and truth are the priority for me on this blog's information, no matter if it's about a product or anything else. Not every product or service or store etc. may be mentioned in each and every post as an affiliate. While I hope to generate a small profit for my time and effort to create this blog, I hold myself to the highest standard of integrity. I appreciate my readers, and always make it my goal to deliver quality, honest material on this blog through each post.

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