My Bathroom, Forest Hills, Queens, October 1, 2005 - When we moved into our townhouse, it was a veritable Museum of Old Wallpaper. The house had striped wallpaper, solid wallpaper, spotted wallpaper, floral wallpaper, Chinese-themed toile wallpaper, fern-patterned wallpaper - and under the fern-patterned wallpaper, ancient moldy flocked wallpaper. Some of it was falling off on its own, some of it was stuck on with superglue. Just about all of it needed replacing. And not just the walls; oh, no, there was wallpaper on many a ceiling, too. We're lucky the woman who owned the place previously didn't wallpaper the floors (no, the beautiful hardwood floors were mostly covered with dirty wall-to-wall carpet, or - shudder - linoleum).

But the pièce de résistance of our collection is our second-floor bathroom, shown here. Black-and-white jungle toile on the walls, ceiling, shower valence, and even covering the roll-up shade (not shown). I suspect the dog would have gotten wallpapered if he had lingered a bit too long in the room while it was being done. Every morning since moving in we've woken up to our little menagerie of monkeys and birds and elephants and lions. But as of next week it will be no more...

Ever since we moved in, we've been systematically removing wallpaper, and let me tell you, it's tough dirty work. I hate wallpaper. And this room is just about the last of it. But we're not merely removing the wallpaper - we're removing the walls. We're having the entire room - and the bathroom directly above, and the kitchen directly below - gutted down to the studs. The last few months have been a whirlwind of faucet and tile shopping, and finally the actual work starts October 11 (which is coincidentally four years to the date from when we closed on the house).

So as of next week, we'll be living in a cloud of dust with no kitchen, but fortunately with one remaining working bathroom. Our contractor (and neighbor) swears it will all be done by Christmas, for which we are planning to host both sets of parents and both brothers and a sister-in-law and a nephew and possibly a niece if she arrives early. If it's not done, I guess we'll be having Christmas at our neighbor's place...