Layers and Layers of Wallpaper

Have you ever during a renovation, uncovered many layers of wallpaper? It’s like an archeological dig. Or scraping, more like it.

Here’s what we found when we renovated our master bathroom back in 2006. These vintage layers were lurking behind the vanity:

Our house, built in 1969, had only two owners before us and apparently both liked mint and beige-yellow in the bathroom. Neither do your complexion any favors, I can tell you from experience. But it was mushy walls and floors that made us rip out the bathroom, wallpaper still attached to the wallboard on its way to the garbage. Thank goodness.

But some wallpaper layers look pretty cool. There’s something to letting wallpaper peel naturally or scraping it artfully, then photographing it. Have a look …

Photo by L’imaGiraphe on Flickr:

Hmmm, Apartment Therapy already discussed this – there are no original ideas any more:

I’m really a fan of decay and abandonment! Believe it or not. It’s not always morbid. There can be beauty. Like in this gorgeous photo of 300 years of wallpaper, photographed by Charles Linden shared on Flickr:

There’s a whole series of photos of the room where these layers were found in his Farmhouse Renovations series, with more images of scraped and peeled wallpapers.

If I’m reading right — and I keep thinking my eyes are deceiving me — this is a textile not wallpaper layers, by Gina Pierce:

This is a bold composition, photographed by Tess of Demure Folk blog in an old farmhouse:

I think it’s good to look for the beauty in the unconventional, in the abandoned and forgotten.

This is a beautiful combo of 40 years of wallpapers, uploaded by Mikael Stenborg on Pinterest and lo and behold, that might even be the original source! This gorgeous image doesn’t appear to be anywhere else online (thank you for Pinterest):

Well this crazy combo is probably driving your eyes crazy. It’s driving mine crazy. So enough for now. I hope you enjoyed seeing these wallpapers in a different way, with more appreciation. I forgive you for forgetting all of this the next time you have to peel paper off a wall though!