summer thunderstorms and old wallpaper

yeah. well. i am pooped. i am taking it easy today and doing household chores because yesterday my buddy and i decided to undertake what has turned out to be a herculean task. i own and live in an old apartment building that has 3 floors. it isn't huge but it is old- the first two floors were built in the late 1870's and a third floor was added later. the back porches were taken off and replaced a couple of years before we bought the place but the front stairwell has never been painted or fixed up. hence our idea. my buddy is like- yeah- let's do it! we'll take a couple of days and prep and prime and paint- and it will look great! guess we were basking in the afterglow of a successful front steps replacement. that's another story.

so- yesterday began the scraping and scraping and scraping. apparently, after the third floor was built- someone decided to put wall paper in the stairwell to make it look nice. my guess is it was wood panelled and wall paper accented. well, it being a rental- more wall paper went up over top the original wall paper times two and everything got painted over. sigh. we did not know that when we started. the ceilings are very high and there is no way to get to them because we can't put a ladder on the stairs (although the thought had crossed our mind briefly.) so we codgeled up a scraping tool made out of an extender pole, paint scraper, and duct tape. that worked ok but layer upon layer was remaining glued. so- i pulled out the big gun- fabric softener. yes- we sprayed fabric softener on the wall paper and it peeled off. it is a bit scary to think that we put that in our laundry.

as for the thunderstorm- we are about to get one so i am off. thunder is here and it is black outside. hopefully, we don't lose power. more later.