My family room needs help. We were thinking about putting a  stone halfway up the wall and changing the tile on the floor (the wood stove is dark forest green, my paint and furniture are neutral earth tone, and the wall is 15 X 19 feet. Any suggestions?
 

Ramsin: You don’t want to accentuate a problem in the house, the stove. Make it disappear. First of all that green is not a good colour, use stove paint and paint it black. Second, I love texture. So take a wall and cover it with a stone veneer from wall to wall. It’s easy to glue on the drywall and a great DIY project. Plus, there are lots of textures and colours to choose from.

 

I want to renovate my kitchen, the seventeen year old wall paper needs to come down. I want to paint a medium tope colour and want to add red accents. What colour should I paint the base board and trim?  I also need new counter tops, in addition can you put carpet in the kitchen currently there is ceramic tile.

 

Michelle: No, never put carpet in the ‘hygiene areas,’ which are your kitchens your bathrooms; they grow bacteria when they get wet and dirty, and start to smell.

 

Removing wallpaper can be scary. The first thing you need to figure out is what your wallpaper is on. Is it drywall or plaster? The difference is plaster is harder and applied right to the wall, whereas, drywall is what we build with now, its paper on either side with gypsum inside of it. The best way to figure the difference is plaster will be cooler to the touch and harder if you knock at it, drywall will be hollow as you move along the studs. The difference is you should us a slightly different methods when removing the wall paper like how much you can wet it and what scraping tools you should use.

 

The first thing you should do is the peel test, because hopefully it’s strippable. If it doesn’t peel and starts pulling at the paper on your drywall then stop because you can ruin you drywall and you will have more work because you will have to patch and repair the drywall.

 

If it isn't strip-able there are a few different methods when removing wallpaper if it isn’t strip-able. One method is soaking the wallpaper. You might need to score the top of it if it has a vinyl covering, there are tools you can use to create these scores, which create little holes in the wallpaper. By doing this it will allow wallpaper to let in water and create moisture between the wall and the wallpaper. You want to get the water behind the surface. Some ways to do this is by using a roller or a steamer. But you don’t want to use too much water because it can damage your drywall.

 

When scraping off the wallpaper keep you scraper flat, you don’t want to dig into the wall. And remember it's a process. Don’t try to clean everything in one shot. Clean, steam, scrap and repeat until all the wallpaper is removed.