Wallpaper: A Trip Through History

Like a pretty woman dressed in ugly clothes, our home’s elegant features are overshadowed by garish wallpaper. During our remodeling, we’ve uncovered quite a few styles of wallpaper – it’s like a wallpaper museum. Let’s take a tour, shall we? We’ll start with the sitting room and dining room.

You’ll first notice the deep forest green color of the sitting room’s wallpaper, which is accented with odd mauve-colored shapes. In the foreground, you’ll see the dining room’s sultry red paper on the upper portion of the wall, with a light pink wallpaper just below it to soften the room. Here’s a designer’s secret: The room is actually wallpapered in just the soft pink paper. The upper portion of the paper is painted red. Clever!

Here’s what we found underneath that first layer of wallpaper…

It’s the 1970s!

Here I am getting rid of it…

What fun!

Now, let’s move on to the front hall, which must have been wallpapered the same day as the dining room…

Hey look! It’s the 1970s again! Let’s take a closer look

Beautiful!

Next, we have the kitchen, which is home to our most historic sample of wallpaper. Circa 1940 perhaps?

It was underneath the 80s.

Time to head upstairs. C’mon!

Here we have another display of vintage wall covering. This was once a bedroom that three boys shared. It’s now half of the new master suite.


And now for our last stop…the bathroom, which captures a look that I like to call “Old Lady.”

I just recently peeled a section of this off to see what was beneath it

Looks like tile, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. That’s actually plaster that’s been scored to mimic the look of tile. It’s poor man’s tile, but I still think it’s pretty neat. Despite that, we’ll be knocking these walls down soon.

So, there you have it. A walk through the eras of wallpapering via my house. Which from now on will remain wallpaper free.

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