I ventured into a brave new world yesterday. Wallpaper. I’m not Martha and it wasn’t a pretty scene. It was just a border – prepasted at that. It wasn’t hard once I got the hang of it, but it wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had either. When I was first looking at wallpaper a helpful fellow shopper assured me that her 8 year old twin daughters had put up their own borders without incident. (This has nothing to do with anything, but I want to point out that the woman with the 8 year old twin daughters had infants – triplets – in a stroller. The whole fertility drug thing is out of hand.)

I was skeptical of the 8 year old story, having once been a participant-observer for my neighbor’s wallpaper adventures. But they used grown-up wallpaper – the kind that covers the whole wall and requires that paste stuff. My job was to keep the greyhound out of the paste. I was highly succesful. Unfortunately, I somehow ended up coated in paste.

But my task was going to be easy, right? 8 year olds can do this. Here are the things I learned you need for a succesful and fulfilling pre-pasted/wallpaper-for-idiots experience: a damp, clean sponge, a bucket of water (or some other nearby watersource), a stable stepladder, and a well-developed vocabulary of obscenities. Add a very needy and spoiled housecat to that mix and you’ve got yourself a whole afternoon of fun. I want to point out that I needed 3 packages of paper to do the whole office. The first package had no instructions so I improvised.

Then I found that in each of the other 2 packages – which were otherwise identical – there were completely different (and conflicting) instructions. Completely. One package said to immerse the paper for 6 seconds and then let it set up for 10 mintues before sticking it to the wall. Another said wet it down with a damp sponge and then press to wall.

At that point I decided that the method I improvised worked out okay so I stuck with it. My method: cut section, preferably in a straight line; run section under faucet in bathroom sink; race back into room without dripping paste onto upright bass laying in middle of floor; climb ladder while cat tries to make you fall; hang up section; smooth out airbubbles with sponge; swear a lot as you match seams; retreat from ladder; drink beer; repeat. Using my method the process just gets easier and easier the farther you get around the room. The hangover the next morning, however, is a bitch.

Tomorrow: why naked housecleaning really is the superior method!