Someday, Someone Will Call Me Bad Names
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 at 8:09AM I’m posting this story against my better judgement because it’s too good not to share.
But it I ever put my house on the market?
Someone remind me to delete this.
The man who built our house also lived in it with his family for seven years before he sold it to us. He is a well known builder in the area which is … interesting. Interesting because you’d think a builder would know better than to line the shower with drywall rather than cement board.
Or plumb the kitchen with so many twists and turns that I have the guy who snakes our drain on speed dial.
Or put up wallpaper on an unpainted wall.
Which is what happened in our master bathroom.
Which I did not discover until I tried to peel the wallpaper and large chunks of the wall came with it.
On the List of Home Projects Mindee Is In Charge Of is “stripping walllpaper.” So that is what I tried to do about four years ago. Only I couldn’t get it all off without major wall damage, so I stopped. And the walls remained half peeled for about two years while other house emergencies took precedence.
Somehow I thought that someday we’d have money for me to hire a professional to just come in and take care of it.
I’m so silly!
About two years ago, I admitted defeat and asked Rich to just put bead board up over the whole mess. On the List Of Home Projects Rich Is In Charge Of is putting up paneling. Rich resisted my transfer of responsibility and told me that if I would just finish stripping the top foot of the wall, he’d cover the rest.
He underestimated my laziness.
Last weekend he finally gave in and began the process of covering the walls. First he put in a new floor and then the beautiful, glorious bead board went up.
When he finishes, I’m going to paint it light blue and then he’ll put white crown molding on the top. It is a gigantic improvement over ugly, half peeled walls of hideous red wallpaper and drywall.
But we feel guilty.
Because some day, someone else will live in this house. They’ll probably be young and hip and want to update everything. The first thing they’ll do is tackle this bathroom to take down the bead board. When they do, they’ll find this: 
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Reader Comments (17)
Hilarious!
AHAHAHAHAHAHA. That's hilarious. And while it's a happy message, it reminds me of a book written by Chuck Palahniuk.
Now, THAT is hilarious! I wish our previous owners had left explanatory notes. But, then again, they'd be in French so we'd still by mystified.
Haha. My brother-in-law recently pulled a bunch of shingels (they were way bad) off his living room way. Underneath, he found a lovely pictures of an Indian. The previous owners were his parents. My father-in-law loved the pictures. ;)
Hahaha that is awesome!!
I wouldn't spend another moment worrying about it. Its just drywall. Its not like you nailed paneling up to hide the lath and plaster walls and didn't tell the young couple buying your house that the entire this still had the knob and tube wiring from the early 1900s still in the walls making your entire house a fire hazard right? : )
And I had to google "lath" I always thought it was "laff." ha ha
LOL this happened to my parents and they had to power-sand the entire bathroom. Oil-based primer the entire thing. Then finally paint it with two layers of paint. Biggest pain in the tooshie!.
I love your bead board idea.
That is the funniest thing I've seen in a while, and if it were me buying the house and we redid the bathroom and I found that note? I would laugh so hard that it would be a good thing I was in the bathroom, 'cause I'd need to use it.
What you did looks great, too!!
Oh goodness, I don't even WANT to know what the previous owners in our house were thinking. They patched walls with packing tape, then wallpapered over them. REALLY.
You crack me up Mindee!
Love it! The post AND the bead board.
I know what you mean though. I'm not sure who built our house, but we have found all kinds of awful in it while renovating.
Thanks for the chuckle ot the day! Perfect solution!
I LOVE it! And If I happened to be the young and hip person who next moves into your house I would totally write a blog post about the awesome note we found in the bathroom :)
I am sooooooo glad that the project is finished. Do you remember the
paneling in our living room that we pulled a piece off and discovered that
it was nailed directly to the studs? No drywall behind it at all. Ach!
So we dry-walled OVER the panelling.
When my husband redid our basement, he found an old owners manual for a gun from the 50s or 60s behind the drywall in the vent area. He left the manual and added an empty beer can to mark his work....
I LOVE THIS!
That's awesome. Reminds me of when my mom tried to wallpaper her bedroom. She made it halfway around the room okay, and then suddenly the ends weren't matching up. She was yelling at me, thinking I wasn't holding the paper straight. After about an hour of tears and finally using the plumb line, she discovered the wall itself was crooked. She couldn't have hung the paper straight if she tried, because the wall wasn't plumb and the floor was uneven. Yay builders!