Nothing is ever simple

when it comes to home improvement.  My story goes something like this ~~ In fact, it goes exactly like this, since it is my story.

Once upon a time -  2 summers ago, two adorable grandchildren of mine decided that a little rip on the hallway wallpaper somehow indicated that they should pull on that like it was a pull tab lottery ticket.  Not that they knew what a lottery ticket was, but that is just an example. 

So anyhow, pull they did....and with one swift motion pulled off a strip of wallpaper about 30 inches long and an inch wide.  Seeing what fun that was, they went about the business of pulling any loose ends they could find...and if there weren't any, making some new ones in places. I came around the corner to what looked like the aftermath of a parade of wallpaper confetti on the floor. 

Sophie even proudly showed me this example of her handiwork, asking me if it was bigger than she was. You can see Keegan's little hand in the picture below with part of his contribution, too.

At that point it was decided new wallpaper border would be the only solution to this problem.

Time passed and I did nothing about it and the problem remained because deep down I knew what would happen.  I was right, as what I feared would happen, did, in fact, happen.  A small little job became something more than I wanted to mess with.

The old wallpaper in the hallway had been up for about 15 years. Quite the life for paper, so I decided to just change that as well, using some ugly paper I had bought at a yard sale about 6 years ago for a buck a roll.  This paper was intended for the dead deer room aka Billski's living room, but had never been put up because I told him I wasn't going to do it until he let me paint the brick in there to make the room lighter.  A work standstill started then that continues to this day.  Although truthfully, he told me about 3 months ago, I could paint in there, so now the ball is back in my court ~ where I will probably be bounce it for a good long while.

Back to this story, though.  The paper was ugly, but our hallway is nothing but pictures (literally about a hundred) hanging, so it's not as if there's much of the paper seen, so it was fine for a backdrop for all the family pictures.  Zac and I started to hang it and the glue was totally dried out, meaning we had to paste every piece of paper.  Of course.

Next came the border - which I love - and which went up quite nicely with the fresh, awesome glue.  For about an hour.  Then I decided it needed to be about 2 inches lower.  By now, Andi had joined us and she looked at me like I had horns growing out my head, but with everything going on with Carly, they just smiled and said OK, while no doubt thinking I had lost my marbles. 

We removed all the border and then had to paste it all to get it back up there to stay.  Of course.

Now, here's where it gets crazy (as if that wasn't).  Zac had replaced the vinyl right at the front door with some lovely new strip vinyl flooring and it looked great.  Bill had ripped the vinyl when bringing in the new refrigerator a few months ago and I had "fixed" by the clever placement of a throw rug, but it was time for a more permanent fix. 

Zac cleaned the hall carpets for me, but they still looked yucky, so I decided that the carpets should come up and the wonderful new flooring be put down all through the hall.  Great idea since we could just MOP the hallway from now on!

Sorta a great idea, anyway. The carpets and pads were removed, a few hundred more dollars were spent on flooring and we were ready to begin.  Almost.  We had to also buy threshold covers for 8 doors that lead into the hallway since the carpet was now gone.  And then of course....

Once the baseboards were removed to take up the carpet, it was easy to see that previously the walls had been painted far enough down to go behind the baseboards originally, but the vinyl wasn't nearly as thick as the carpet, so the baseboards would be lower and the unpainted wall would show.  Of course.

Which meant the walls had to be painted. Naturally.  So they were.  However,  once the baseboards were put back up, the corner molding didn't quite reach from top to bottom anymore.  It stopped about 3/4" shy, so it would need to be replaced.  Of course.

So a tiny tear of wallpaper has turned into new wallpaper, border, flooring, thresholds, paint and trim work.  When it is all done and the pictures are hung back up there, it will be great and will serve us well for years to come because it won't be happening again anytime soon.