A Memory of a Farmhouse

I was not armed with the correct implements of excavation, but I didn’t know that.

So I began anyway.

In a corner. Where I could experiment.

I pulled the couch away from the wall. It slid easily along the wide, highly polished floor boards.

The first layer was securely attached. I slid my paint scraper under the edge of gaudiness and nothing happened.

I worked my palette knife between the woodwork and the wallpaper.

Nothing happened.

Rocking back on my heels, I surveyed the expanse of the wall. It was huge. And tall. The ceilings were almost ten feet high which meant there was a daunting expanse of hideously printed wallpaper to remove.

I’m sure someone hadn’t thought it hideous when they hung it so many years ago.

I’m sure someone thought huge cabbage roses in the colors of citrus would look great on a dining room wall.

Unfortunately, that someone wasn’t me.

I shuddered to think how bright the colors would have been originally, when the wallpaper was first hung. Oh my.

I wondered if the farmwife had sought to bring sunshine into the gray and dreary Ohio winters…if she had clapped her hands in delight when the job was completed and twirled in a happy dance in the middle of the room.

I did not feel like clapping my hands in delight OR twirling when I looked at the wallpaper so I attempted its removal again. Perhaps if I started removing the wallpaper from a loose spot the job would be easier. After carefully surveying all the edges up to the molding and finding no bubbles or pieced pulled away, I discarded that idea. Someone really hung that wallpaper to stay forever.

I was stumped. So I did what many of us do in these situations…I called my Dad.

“Wellll…” he said thoughtfully, “Try wetting a section of the wall down with a wet rag and letting it set a few minutes. That might loosen up that wallpaper paste some. Are you sure you want to take that off? That’s a big job.”

Sure? Of course I was sure. It was unsightly. It was dreadful.

Besides, I had found the perfect color of green paint for the dining room walls…darker than the shade of the asparagus spears in the large garden to the east of the house, lighter than the shade of unfurling lillie-of-the-valley spears hidden on the west side of the house…I was sure. With the white painted woodwork and the shiny maple floors, I was positive that particular shade of green would look amazing in the large high-ceilinged room.


I got a rag.

I soaked the wall.

My Dad was right. The layer of wallpaper started pulling away easily. I dampened and carefully scraped and dampened and carefully scraped and ended up with 12” free of the orange and lemon roses.


But…

The next layer of wallpaper was even worse. Pink and purple peony-like flowers with a narrow yellow line grid came into view.

I dampened and carefully scraped and dampened and carefully scraped, coming next to a wide striped pattern in dismal browns, grey’s and flesh-tones.

I shuddered. I could not imagine a housewife spinning around in delight when that particular transformation was completed.

I couldn’t imagine a woman with sight even picking that pattern at all.

Three more layers of faded and ugly wallapers peeled away, finally exposing a 12” square of pitted horse-hair plaster wall. The surface felt crumbly and brittle.


I felt my plan for fresh green paint slipping away. I suspected that it was all those layers of wallpaper that had kept the fragile plaster from disintegrating in the long years since it was first applied.

Shoving the couch back into place, I cleaned up the mess of the paper and headed to the wallpaper store.

I looked at pattern after pattern…waiting for the ‘a-ha’ moment that was surely felt by the other farmwives as they discovered citrus cabbage roses and strange, fanciful peonies.

It took awhile.

But then I found it.

The perfect, perfect wallpaper.

When it was delivered a few weeks later, I took it home with me and over the next month hung it carefully, strip by strip.

When my layer of wallpaper in the old dining room was complete, I twirled in the center of the room in delight. How perfect it was! How happy! How me!

I clapped my hands in delight…

…and I swear to you, I think the ghosts of all the past farmwives spun in joy with me…celebrating their own layers of perceived loveliness.

Even the farmwife who picked the brown, gray and flesh-tone stripes.

Perhaps, she was the most joyous of all.

I will never know how a future farmwife will look at my layer of wallpaper when she undertakes her own wallpaper excavation.

Perhaps she will start in another corner and carefully scrape away layer after layer of history…finally coming to mine.

Will she softly breathe, “Oh my…I hope I can find new wallpaper JUST like this” or will she shudder and move on through the layers?

I hope she finds my layer worth twirling over.

But even if she doesn’t…I did.

And it makes me smile to have been part of a long line of farmwives trying to layer our nests with grace and beauty for our families.


This little memory is written in honor of the letter “L” for Alphabe-Thursday. L is for Layers!


To read other 'L' offerings, just click here.