A good friend of mine just closed on her new house tonight and we celebrated with some champagne – with no fear of spilling, breaking glasses, or trekking in mud.

You see, this house is what you might call a “complete gut,” and I have the photos to prove it…

No, that photo above isn’t of my friend’s house, but it represents what she will do to the home in the coming weeks.

The house was in the possession of the same owner for the last sixty years, which of course is a nice way of saying “It’s a gut renovation.”

Having cleared it with my friend first, I went ahead last night and took photos of some of the oddest things I’ve seen in a house in a long time.  Notably – the abundance of wallpaper throughout the house!

I have never seen so much wallpaper, in any house, anywhere, ever.

Every room was wallpapered – and not just on the walls!

Many rooms had multiple types of wallpaper, and there was a variety of colours, styles, textures, and never-been-done-before effects.

Let’s have a look…

First, we have a very simple photo of a very simply (and ugly) wallpaper in the kitchen.

You’ve got wallpaper in a bizarre Navajo pattern running up from the baseboards where it meets a horizontal wallpaper with flowers!  The pink walls were a joy too.

Now, we get into something a bit more funky.  The basement had two types of wallpaper, on opposite sides of the room.

Perhaps this was the kids play area (although the basement was unfinished…), and maybe that’s why there’s such an abundance of colour, and less flowers!

Here we see the vertical stripe pattern:

And on the other side of the wall, we see colorful hearts!

Now remember when I said that the wallpaper wasn’t just on the walls?  Well trust me when I say that this is not linoleum tile!

This is wallpaper, on the floor, in the basement, in between the hearts and the stripes:

Any guesses as to what this is?

Seriously – guess before you continue reading.

I’ll space things out so you don’t cheat…

….

….

…

Like this…

Any guesses?

These are two basement windows……that have been wallpapered!  Yes, really!  Wallpaper on windows!  What will they think of next?

This was a neat touch too.

This is the hall closet, which has been wallpapered.

They even wallpapered the closets…

Here is a series of three photos that demonstrate (as if the above photos don’t…), just how much the previous owner loved wallpaper!

Here is a wall that is made of…..what?

Is it drywall?

Is it tile?

Nope…

It’s cardboard!

They even wallpapered the cardboard!

You see, the wallpaper wouldn’t stick to the painted brick that’s shown below, so they wallpapered over some cardboard and stuck that to the walls!

Last but not least, this is my personal favourite.  This is even better than the wallpapered windows, although that’s tough to beat.

In many old houses, you have unexplainable pipes sticking out of walls, or a strange wire, or something else that you learn to live with.

Well the pipe sticking through this wall was unacceptable, and the owner wallpapered over it too!

Good luck to my friend who now has to rip the house down to the studs and endure a three month (read: six month) renovation!

If anybody can do it – you can, Jen! 🙂