Childhood wallpaper trauma left its mark

When we bought our bungalow, there were several things that had to go: the aquamarine indoor/outdoor carpeting in what was to become the library; the fake Tiffany swag lamp in the kitchen; and the water-warped paneling in the basement.

The first thing I did away with was the bathroom wallpaper.

Although it wasn't as offensive as the indoor/outdoor carpeting or as tacky as the fake Tiffany, the wallpaper rankled me. It was a nondescript pattern with a border that suggested a rainbow.

Ignoring a chorus of more-experienced home owners who reminded me that there were bigger fish to fry, I went ahead and went at the wallpaper, which gave in without a fight and came down easily -- in large, lazy sheets.

Being one of those unfortunate people who never learn from just one mistake, I replaced the nondescript wallpaper with a very descript wallpaper -- printed with brightly colored, quirky fish and undulating blue and orange seaweed on a background of deep black.

Since it was my first time as a wallpaperer, I asked a friend to help. Of course, I ended up being very little help to her when it came to cutting and matching the complicated paper. It took us hours to wallpaper that tiny bathroom -- and not quite that long for me to tire of that quirky, fishy wallpaper.

That wallpaper came down as easily as the wallpaper before it. And, as I balled up the large, gummy sheets of wallpaper, I vowed to never wallpaper again.

As far back as I could remember, the kitchen walls of the suburban rambler in which I grew up were covered with wallpaper, a traditional kitchen wallpaper, with images of old-fashioned coffee grinders, pepper mills and the like. It might have been an odd match to our mod, early '60s-style counters with pink and gray kidney-shaped squiggles, except that the wallpaper was all pink and gray, too.

About 10 years after pink and gray went out of style, the kitchen countertops went, the linoleum was replaced with kitchen carpeting and it was time for the wallpaper to go.

By that time, we had evolved into a family of darned-if-you-don't-do-it-yourselfers. We changed the oil in our cars, made minor fixes on the furnace and when the house needed a new roof, my brother gathered a group of his buddies. With the aid of sandwiches, sun tea and plenty of sweat, we got a new roof.

But my mother knew that ancient kitchen wallpaper would be too much for us. She decided to call in the pros to strip the paper, prep and paint the walls a cheery day-glo yellow.

The day before the big job was to be done, my older sister, then a cheeky junior in high school, left her daily note ("Mom, please wake me up at 7:15. I have to go to choir practice . . .") for mother. Only thing was, she wrote it on the doomed wallpaper. In Magic Marker.

Within minutes the coffee grinders and pepper mills were obscured by snippets of poems ("Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," lines from country and western songs ("Work your fingers to the bone and what do you get? Boney fingers. . . "), homey sayings ("God bless this mess") and curses (rather frank ones) against the drudgery of housework. Friends and neighbors stopped by to join in the fun, adding their own favorite phrases ("The hurrider I go, the behinder I get," "Hang on baby, Friday's coming,"The South shall rise again!") cartoons and caricatures.

When every inch of the walls was penned over, we stood back to inspect our work, a bit shocked by our graffiti frenzy but secure in the thought that soon this would be a fond memory.

I left for school the next morning wondering what the workers would say. But the workers didn't come that day. Or the next. Seems they'd gotten behind on another job. We had to live with our graffiti kitchen for quite a few days, during which we learned it was possible to see our handiwork from the front door.

Those seemingly endless days, I played outside a lot, tried to steer visitors to the side entrance and developed a deep dislike of wallpaper.