The Preemie Twins are dead! Long Live the Preemie Twins!

When we moved into our house, every room except the upstairs bathroom was decorated with different, ugly wallpaper. That’s 11, count them, ELEVEN kinds of ugly wallpaper.

So we have slowly been chipping away (in some cases, literally) at the wallpaper. First was the kitchen and living room, then our bedroom and the upstairs hallway, and the dining room and entry/foyer over the winter.

This weekend, I’m pleased to say, we got rid of another significant ugly wall-treatment holdover from the previous owners: the Preemie Twins Room.

This was the bedroom of, you guessed it, the twin sons of the previous owners. Apparently, judging by the way the previous owner said “preemie twins” roughly 15,278 times during the closing, these twins were born prematurely. So the room was decorated as a boy’s nursery. It was white on top, ugly blue on bottom*, with a teddy bear border and those godawful vinyl wallpaper stickers of moons and bears in pajamas and shit. Makes sense, right?

It would, except when they moved out of the house, the “Preemie Twins” were THREE YEARS OLD. No longer preemie! Not by any standard!**

Obviously, the first thing I did when we moved in was to rip down the stickers and the border. The border, of course being a cheap-ass piece of crap, left a brown paper backing. But at least the bears were gone.

We lived with the border backing for about two months, before I finally decided it was time to paint. Guess what? I couldn’t get the whole backing off, thanks to the care the previous owners took in NOT properly preparing the wall for wallpaper. So instead of a plain brown strip going around the room, there was an area six inches wide, just at eye level, where it appeared that some one sneezed. Over and over.

Since this is the spare bedroom, and we have not had any overnight guests, we just kind of closed the door and tried not to go in this room over the winter.

But, since we have some guests coming soon, and since I couldn’t stand it any longer, this weekend I painted the room a soothing pale green color, in wonderful matte paint.

Ah. No more preemie twins. Let me tell you, it feels pretty good.

* In high gloss paint, mind you. HIGH GLOSS.
** As an aside, the previous owners apparently also at one time stored a diaper pail in the room, probably behind the door, because the very first thing my dog Roger did on entering the room was to try to pee on the door. He did not do this anywhere else in the house, and generally speaking, he only does that when he smells, you know, wee-wee. I guess he could still smell the preemie twins’ diapers even after three years, which is the GROSSEST THING EVER. Luckily, I caught him in time and avoided a wee-wee incident. And then I steam cleaned the room like five times. And wiped down the walls and door with Lysol. And then performed a Native American purification rite. Because you never know.