Work has stalled on the Queen Anne Rowhouse lately. The electricity’s still driving me crazy as I slowly install the Houseworks lights that I bought to replace the Cir-Kit lights that broke my heart. Two weeks ago I got one into the attic but the second attic fixture was broken. Not sure what the problem was… it worked fine when I tested it, and then I removed the bulb to paint the fixture and when I went to put the bulb back I couldn’t get it in. There was something wrong with the holes that the two wires fit into, it was like they were blocked or squished or something so I couldn’t fit the bulb in as far as it needed to go. I broke the wires off two bulbs trying to cram them in and finally quit with the realization that any bulb I managed to shove in there would fall right out when I turned the light upside down to install it. So frustrating!

So, I put off electricity again and moved onto wallpaper—which turned out to be equally frustrating. This is going to be a modern house with some traditional Victorian decor. I see the owners as San Francisco yuppies who have spent a lot of money to restore their Victorian to its original glory. I’ve been playing around with sample images from Bradbury & Bradbury (which is theoretically where my San Francisco yuppies would buy their wallpaper!), trying to keep the color schemes basically the same within the house and consistent with the details on the outside of the house.

Here are some papers I printed out for the attic. After printing I spray them with matte sealer to protect them.

I started with the big attic room. My original plan was to use papers with muted greens throughout the house, to match the green trim outside. But in this room I plan to put a pool table (which has a bright green surface) and maybe also the rug I recently finished cross stitching, which also has bright colors. So I came up with this combination, which seemed to go better with those two items than everything else I tried.

Liking it, I moved onto the smaller room. I thought I’d really like this, but once I saw it in place I was not so thrilled with it. Also, I got glue on the paper, so I had to pull it out anyway.

Here’s where the aforementioned frustration came in… I’m not sure what the problem was, maybe just a bad luck weekend, but I got glue on the paper REPEATEDLY. I tried doing the little room three or four different times before giving up. It’s not that the space is too tiny to get my hands into, I just kept making a mess. Might be that glue spots show up more on this printed paper than if I were using dollhouse wallpaper with a coating.

I did manage to get the second wall done on the larger room before my frustration got the better of me. (Had to do this one twice, too!) I haven’t done the third wall yet because there will be a wire coming in from the little room that’ll need to be covered up. Well, that was the original plan, but now that the ceiling fixture’s busted, maybe not. I can’t paper until I decide, though, so once again electricity stands in the way of progress. I wish I’d never decided to electrify this house.

The messed up light fixture and repeated wallpaper failures were two weekends ago. Last weekend I didn’t even touch the house. This weekend we made up, but I decided to work on something else: hardwood floors.

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