Inferior Wallpaper Removal

I gotta say, wallpaper removal is hard and also boring. Would it be wrong, do you think, to just buy a heavy duty sander and just power right through the wallpaper do the sheet rock below? Turn that thing on high and grind the wall paper into a shimmery shimmery dust? This seems simultaneously both good and bad. Probably will just stick with a scraper and some sort of liquid spray stuff to unfix the glue.

This weekend we are going to do SO much of this. I hope that I get really good at it.  

Closing

What happened today was this:  we (the wife and I) signed our names like 10000000 times, wrote a check for a lot of money, drank some coffee, felt a little nervous.  All the while people smiled real BIG and congratulated us a lot.  In return for the signatures and $$$ we got a white envelope with an address written on it in green Sharpie marker.  Inside this were about fifteen keys, all the same. These keys open the front door to (what is now) our house:  our very own South Philadelphia rowhome.  

I should remark that before the closing, we went over to the house that was to become (and now is) ours to make a final walkthrough. While we were there this little old lady came over from across the street and spoke to us for about five minutes.  She called us "yous" because its South Philadelphia and I think she told us her name.  It was hard to be sure because she spoke more or less as quickly as the Micromachines spokesperson.  Mostly she wanted to tell us how to clean the drapes that are in the front window.  Apparently she has cleaned these drapes herself many times because she looked after the folks that lived there before us.  I didn't understand any of the intricacies of the drape laundering advice, I must admit.  It involved safety pins and "panels" and hanging things in the correct way. Seemed like a lot of work for cleaning the drapes.  They are nice enough drapes.  I don't want them.  

After this we went outside to head off to the closing.  At this point I hear a crashing sound and some yelling.  I look up and my wife is already sprinting.  What has happened is that two other little old ladies were out walking and one of them has fallen right down right on her nose!  My wife is like Superman for little old ladies.  She loves them and wants to help them at all time. (I mean, we all love little old ladies and want to help them, but my wife elevates this whole sort of thing to heroic levels.)  This little old lady was a little shaken and had a bloodied lip. She was otherwise fine. She kept on saying "I fell down right on my nose!"  It wasn't really very funny.

Okay, so now we have this rowhouse.  It isn't like this is a house we can just move into.  It is structurally sound and in a cool-as-hell neighborhood but every square inch of visible surface area in this house MUST BE DESTROYED.  Well, destroyed is overstating it.  

Actually, it isn't.  It has green rugs everywhere and everywhere there isn't green rugs is green linoleum.  Under the green linoleum, you ask?  More green linoleum.  Under that?  I'm not sure.  Probably (a) an Indian burial site (b) China or (c) more green linoleum.  One wall was entirely mirrors (more on this in a minute).  There is a clock which is built directly into the wall.  I believe that it is wired directly into the houses electrical system.  (I love this clock but the wife says it must go. The wife has traits in common with the Last Son of Krypton and so I will bow to her wisdom on this.)  The wallpaper, oh my.  It shimmers.  It is white, opalescent (OPALESCENT!!!).  It must go.  Unfortunately removing wallpaper is neither easy nor fun nor fast.  (I removed 1.6 feet squared tonight.  It took forever.)

So, yeah, we went over and started banging on things.  First order of business was to see how that mirror was affixed to the house.  I was worried it was glued onto the drywall and that I'd have to incur 140 years of bad luck breaking the twenty panels with a sledge hammer. (On the other hand, I kind of wanted to beat the living crap out of twenty mirrors with a hammer. Maybe set up some strobe lights, a smoke machine and blast some sort of "heavy metal" music all the while.)  In any case, it turned out that the mirrors were held up with some screws, so we were able to take them down pretty quickly and with none broken!  Score one for the new homeowners!  After that I beat on the wall beneath with a hammer, just so get some licks in. Also to see what was beneath the sheet rock.  We were hoping for bricks.  Our hopes were realized!  But it looks like the brickwork is pretty much utilitarian and not meant to be seen. This is sad because we were hoping to have an exposed brick wall in the living room so that we can do standup comedy in front of it for our guests:  "Two pasty nerds walk into a bar covered in dust and grit.  Bartender says 'why are you so dirty, nerds?'  The nerds say 'we bought a South Philly rowhouse'."  HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!