May 1, 2010

By Karen Walk

We had another great work day at the Washington - Ames House today.  Deb Case and her sister, Sandra Haile from Las Vegas, NV, came to help with the scraping wallpaper project.   Very soon afterwards, April Hernandez came. Wow!  What a crew!  I can’t believe how much we got done today.   We found that water and fabric softener in a spray bottle works great to help in removing the 4 or 5 layers of wallpaper, much of it coming off one layer at a time.  April thought we needed a fund to buy fabric softener!  We all had a good laugh at that one.  It seems when you get a group of women together doing a big job, it doesn’t seem quite as big! 

There were so many other events going on today that we didn’t expect much of a turnout, but were very well pleased that we had 7 of us working, 6 women and our good buddy,Don French, who has been working on making new screens for the exterior of the house.  He said that there are 39 windows, and we believe him! 

 In the afternoon, Jeanene French and Glenda Ford came and worked on the wallpaper stripping project.  Glenda brought a steamer and went to work on the big wall in the dining room.  Boy, she got a lot done.  She also came up with the idea of getting a bucket of water and a rag and just “glob on” the water and she got a lot of wallpaper off.  But she may find that she used some muscles that she forgot she had.  We’ll see how all of these girls feel tomorrow morning when they get out of bed!  I told them the best cure for that is to come back tomorrow and work those same muscles again.  I don’t know if they really believed that! Ha!

 We had a special little visitor.  We are going to call him, “the Guardian of the Big House.”   When the house was being built, and before the first layer of wallpaper was hung, a worker stained and varnished the woodwork and left us a smile. On one of the walls was a face made from the stain.  He is so cute that we had to take a picture of him.  At least, I think it’s a “him,” but then, how do you tell?    I almost feel bad about covering him up!  As I have said before, “If only walls could talk.”  I bet the person that did that, didn’t figure that at least 110 years later, he would make a bunch of ladies laugh.

 We did have a few real visitors, too.  Peggy Gillian came and Jeanene gave her a tour of the house.  And then since it is May Day, here came my 5 grandchildren (known as the Smadey Bunch) with a cute May Day card that they had made. It had some verses of Scripture about seeds on it and attached was a package of Pansy seeds.  What a sweet surprise! Lorna Wiegers, who knows her way around the big house, gave a tour to Emma Cook.

 We will soon have all of the wallpaper off of the parlor walls.  It is looking great, except for all of the mess. We will hang wall liner after we have the walls clean and the cracks all filled and sanded.  Then the wallpaper can be hung.  It is going to be beautiful.  I hope others will come join the fun.  And if you don’t like to do wallpaper, there are other projects to do.