How Wallpaper Can Hide More Than a Home’s Imperfections

Davy Crockett wallpaper circa 1959

I was tearing off pieces of wallpaper while Mom sanded. We were making a mess.

“Old houses don’t have a straight wall,” Mom said.

She pointed to the top right corner, and I saw what she meant. The corner curved to the left, not straight up to the ceiling. She took the scraper from me and started tearing off more paper. I grabbed one piece and looked at the different layers.

Under the Davy Crockett print in my brother’s room was a torn print of blue and white flowers, and under that was a beige paper with delicate lines. I wondered how many people had slept in that room before Joe and how many years that house had been there.

“See this,” Mom said as she pulled off more layers. “This is the wall crumbling.”

Pieces of the wall, like white bread crumbs, flew through the air.

“And see this over here,” she said. “There’s a big bump in the plaster that I can’t do a thing about. It’ll show through the new paper.”

She got down off the stepladder and unrolled a dark green window shade. It had a few pinholes and wasn’t used on a window anymore.

“I’m gonna glue a piece of this curtain on top of the plaster and hope that keeps the wall from falling apart. It’ll make the new wallpaper smoother,” she said.

Leaning next to the opposite wall was the wallpapering board—a long, thin, rectangular box held together by two metal hooks each wrapped around two screws. The hooks were the same shape and size as the hook on the old cupboard in the house cellar, and the hook that latched the top of the grain bin out in the barn. They looked way too small to be holding anything the size of the wallpapering board, cupboard, or bin.

Unlatched, the board unfolded on narrow hinges. Mom pulled out the metal legs hidden inside, and all of a sudden the board became a table.

Mom cut off a large piece of the curtain.

“Hand me my pot,” she said.

I handed her a dented, aluminum pot filled with wallpaper glue. I also handed her a paintbrush. Mom dipped the brush into the pot and spread the glue over one side of the green fabric.

She took the fabric by the edges and spread it over the crumbling plaster. I handed her a brush with a wide, thin handle that she used to pound the glued edges.

“There, that’ll do it for now.”

I was worried that it would never do, and Joe’s bedroom walls would never look good, even with new wallpaper.

The next morning Grammy Amy drove into the yard and filled the house with her laughter. She and Mom each took one side of the wallpapering table and placed it in the middle of the upstairs hall. Rolls of new wallpaper were unwrapped.

“I love that shade of blue,” Grammy said.

“And there’s not much of a pattern so we won’t waste a lot,” Mom said.

I wasn’t experienced enough to help with the papering, so I watched the two women and tried to stay out of their way.

On the ladder in one corner, Grammy unrolled the paper and let it fall. Mom caught the other end and creased it by the mop-board so they’d know how much to cut. Grammy took the whole roll out to the table, and Mom cut along the crease. Grammy flipped the wallpaper, grabbed the glue brush, and spread the gooey paste all over that side.

She and Mom carried that piece back to the bedroom. Mom climbed the ladder and lined up the top edge of the paper next to the top edge of the wall as best she could, with the walls so uneven. She took the wide brush and smoothed the paper while holding the top with her other hand.

She handed the brush to Grammy, who finished brushing the panel to the floor. I could see bits of the glue oozing out from the edges. Now that panel was glued to the wall.

They talked about papering the upstairs hall at our house and the hall at Grammy’s place which had an elaborate staircase and landing in the middle. Then it was time to get dinner ready for Dad to eat at 11:30—on the dot.

After the meal was over, the ladies did the easier part: cutting and pasting the border that went around the top of the walls to make a finished edge.

“There! That looks a lot better!” Grammy said as she turned around with her hands on her hips, studying the walls one last time. She was wearing one of her full aprons, a calico with bias tape trim and two big pockets in the front. Her graying hair was rolled up from the bottom into a coil around the sides and back of her head.

One of Amy Russell’s handmade aprons.

She didn’t seem to notice that one wallpapered corner was crooked. Somehow, the new paper seemed to hide almost all of the old houses’s imperfections.

“I can hardly wait for you to come do my hall,” Gram laughed, as she and Mom left Joe’s room and went downstairs.

Alone, I realized that there were no more hints of Davy Crockett’s coon cap or the covered wagons dancing along the walls where Joe and I had played games and giggled when we were little. There were no more hints of the mysterious prints in styles that had long gone out of fashion. The new paper had covered up the old layers with all those memories and clues to the past. And I had forgotten to save any.