apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

We found signatures inside a built-in cupboard that had been installed in the early 1920s, right after my grandparents bought the house -- my father and our supervising carpenter/contractor both as boys had known a couple of the men who did the work in the 1920s.

I saved bits of all the wallpaper, in some cases several layers, that came down when we redid the house.

One of the coolest things I ever saw, some years ago, was a small building in Cambridgeshire that was now an office. When the current owners renovated, they found bits of construction all the way back to 14th century wattle and daub, Tudor period updates, 17th work, 19th construction. One of the things they did was cover a wall in plexi or glass (I can't recall) so that the 600 hundred years of history could be seen.

Oh, so cool! I've bookmarked that site in case I'm ever insane enough to take on an old house again.

The bay-window room of our place in upstate NY had:

1. Pink-and-blue floral brocade paper, late 1980s or early 1990s.

2. Beige-y pattern of palm trees and such, just post-WWII. Most of it stuck to the top layer so I didn't get a good look.

3. ORANGE-blue-green large-scale plaid, 1920. This stuff was held on with glue you could use on the space shuttle.

4. Green baroque pattern with cherubs and vases and such, probably put up in the 1880s or 1890s, but that's a guess based on the churn of family members through the house.

5. Almost identical (but not quite) green baroque pattern, hung when the house was built in 1864.

A huge frustration if you're not a pro with real equipment is that you can't see old trim paint colors accurately with the naked eye -- they yellow and fade.

My parents decided to replace the wall paper in the bathroom of our house when we moved in. Our house is a 1950s ranch, so not too much history there. However, the previous owners apparently re-wallpapered over 14 times during the 50 years they lived there, and each time putting the new wallpaper over the old. It took almost 2 days with a steamer and scrapers to peel back all the layers, and each was so different from the others. Everything from mod 60s graphics, to bright primary colored trains when the bath room was for the kids. It was pretty awesome.

I work for the American Institute for Conservation, so after several years of being an AT reader, I was pleasantly surprised to find our journal mentioned on site! Though, I do have to point out that we are not affiliated with Stanford University. Some guy who works there just happens to host our website on a computer there, because they will do it for free...we are actually an independent non-profit professional association based in DC.

Retroboy - thank you for your comment! We changed the post to reflect that you're not affiliated with Stanford University.