Unfrieze

Apart from promising myself more blogging in the new year I also made a pact to finally get my daughter's room decorated with the paint that has been slouching on our sitting-room floor for the last 5 months or so.

I took full advantage of the Succot holidays and convinced my daughter to clear out her room and stack all her knick-knacks in the sitting room.
Her idea of clearing and mine originate on different planets but eventually we got to a state where I could move her bed and other furniture far enough away from the walls.

Then I had to deal with the frieze. Last time I decorated Ballerina's room she was a newborn. I chose a waterproof paint for practicality and a neutral sand colour as a compromise with my Israeli Dearest who was still stuck with the conviction that white walls are the only option.
To liven the room up and make it more baby-friendly I added a frieze. Big Mistake.

I mean it looked lovely with the pastel colour scheme and the pretty bears.
However, after a few years it began to curl at the edge and is, I now discover, a nightmare to remove.

The Unfrieze is about to commence

The homemade frieze I created for my son's room was printed on A4 copy paper and attached to the wall with wallpaper paste. With a little water and a few encouraging scrapes it was gone in a few minutes leaving the wall below in almost pristine condition.

Not so with your factory made self-adhesive frieze. Even though it is curling off the wall. When you grab an edge and pull, the top layer of picture detaches from the backing paper leaving a dirty cream coloured strip still stuck to the wall. Not only that - the picture tears off in strips leaving remnants of picture in the middle of the frieze.

In an effort to remove the dirty cream strip I dampen the wall and set to with my scraper. It takes elbow grease but the water does soften the backing paper making the job mildly easier and lessening the frequency with which I accidentally dig the corner of the scraper in to the wall.

But the frieze is vinyl and in the middle where the picture remains the water doesn't soak through. I gently ease up the edge of a picture scrap, trying not to gouge more holes in the plaster, and pull. Then I repeat until that section of frieze is bare so I can dampen and scrape, dampen and scrape.

But that it not the end of this unfriezing story. Oh no! The frieze used a rubber based adhesive, impervious to my dampen and scrape technique. Now I have to go back along the wall trying to figure out how to deal with this horrid sticky mess.

I attack it with a scotch pad, which does the work, but after an inch I am exhausted and the wall is looking a little miserable. Then I try with the scotch pad and soapy water which is hardly an improvement. Eventually I think of vinegar. The room stinks and at first my eyes water but it does reduce the stickiness and make the job go a little faster. Mind you, it still requires and inordinate amount of elbow grease and I have a crick in my neck from standing with my head cocked on one side to check if the glue has been cleaned from the wall.

Unfrieze in progress.
You can see the gluey mess on the right, glinting menacingly in the light.