A few weeks ago, Maria started musing about the color she’d like the bedroom to be – a kind of sage green she thought would be soothing. I know what it means when Maria starts musing about the color of a room.

Today, the creative volcano that is my wife erupted, and she vanished upstairs to check out the wallpaper. I went upstairs to check on her after I did the afternoon chores – I knew she doesn’t want to be bothered in this feverish creative surges – and when I went up to check on her, she had most of the wallpaper off one of the walls already.

The wallpaper in the upstairs, like the downstairs, hasn’t been changed in decades and goes back several layers. She and I will both start scraping sometime during the week or next weekend.

Once we get started, there is no stopping. Maria is happily obsessive about these projects, and the downstairs is full of scraped walls and soft and vibrant color.

We found some cowboy/rodeo wallpaper further back (must have been a kid’s room at some point) – we’re going to preserve some of it. I specialize in applying hot laundry detergent mixed with water to the paper, we both scrape. We will need to do some plastering.

Before I could quite focus on it, this project is underway. When Maria launches, there is no rest or turning back.

When we restore a room, this essentially means the two of us scrape four or five layers of wallpaper off the old farmhouse walls, and then we paint the walls a different color.

It’s going to be chaotic up there for a while, but also exciting. We love our farmhouse, and Maria’s fusion of new colors in a very old room is quite wonderful. I’ll keep you posted and share the progress. Wish us luck.