Spring Cleaning
Happy Friday! I'm so glad that it's the weekend because I have a lot of spring cleaning to do in my house and I want to get it done and over with! Today I started in my living room by cleaning the windows and vacuuming the roman shades. I have lots of organizing to do in my living room today as well... and I need to wash the walls around my big German windows. If you're an expat you must love windows in this country. In the old buildings they are tall and grand and in the newer buildings (like mine) they are large and square. But the beauty is that they tilt out and also open as fully as you'd like -- super convenient for washing them! We usually hire someone to clean our windows for us but today I decided to do it instead -- it was so easy, especially with the streak-free window cleaner that I found. I miss my raspberry or the lime-scented Windex but this will do just fine...
Before putting the roman blinds back up I need to scrub around my windows because there are these black marks. Tne reason (outside of aesthetics) why I dislike this bumpy wallpaper in my flat is that it's very hard to clean it. I know, it may seem like I hate my walls and I don't -- but I need either flat walls or patterns on walls (wallpaper) -- this bumpy stuff isn't for me. Some say it has texture and is pretty and maybe so, but it also has a chalky surface and it scuffs so easily, I can't imagine having children with wallpaper like this! And I can't wait to have smooth flat walls again someday or some quality wallpaper that I can wipe clean. The corners of my walls where wall meets ceiling, gets these dark streaks - dirt marks - and it's such a pain to clean them. If you have this bumpy stuff on your walls, how do you clean it? I was told to clean it you simply paint over it! Ha! That sounds quite odd to me so is there an alternative? For now I use soap and water and a cloth but still...
(If you live in Germany and like my trees, just go to a flower shop and pick a few up and trim them a bit to look like topiary trees. Mine are from a grocery store called Jibl. The ceramic gray pots are from Toom. I think together, for both plants and both pots, I paid 20, euros. I love my budget trees!)
Now I need to wait for my husband to come home so he can hang the roman blinds once more. :) Until then, I'll scrub my walls and clean the sofa and oh yes -- figure out what to do with all of these books! We have an appointment to see another apartment today but I'm not so sure about it... it's in a beautiful neighborhood nearby but I think it may be too small. But I'm willing to give it a chance and check it out because one never knows...
(images: holly becker for haus maus)
Before putting the roman blinds back up I need to scrub around my windows because there are these black marks. Tne reason (outside of aesthetics) why I dislike this bumpy wallpaper in my flat is that it's very hard to clean it. I know, it may seem like I hate my walls and I don't -- but I need either flat walls or patterns on walls (wallpaper) -- this bumpy stuff isn't for me. Some say it has texture and is pretty and maybe so, but it also has a chalky surface and it scuffs so easily, I can't imagine having children with wallpaper like this! And I can't wait to have smooth flat walls again someday or some quality wallpaper that I can wipe clean. The corners of my walls where wall meets ceiling, gets these dark streaks - dirt marks - and it's such a pain to clean them. If you have this bumpy stuff on your walls, how do you clean it? I was told to clean it you simply paint over it! Ha! That sounds quite odd to me so is there an alternative? For now I use soap and water and a cloth but still...
(If you live in Germany and like my trees, just go to a flower shop and pick a few up and trim them a bit to look like topiary trees. Mine are from a grocery store called Jibl. The ceramic gray pots are from Toom. I think together, for both plants and both pots, I paid 20, euros. I love my budget trees!)
Now I need to wait for my husband to come home so he can hang the roman blinds once more. :) Until then, I'll scrub my walls and clean the sofa and oh yes -- figure out what to do with all of these books! We have an appointment to see another apartment today but I'm not so sure about it... it's in a beautiful neighborhood nearby but I think it may be too small. But I'm willing to give it a chance and check it out because one never knows...
(images: holly becker for haus maus)
Comments
living in a place with the same bumpy wallpaper (which you know that in our case I like, for reasons I had explained), I must say that the cleaning part shoulb be rather hard.
I have not needed to do that, other than vacuming the corners with the small brush equipment of the vacume cleaner, as the apartment had been freshly painted before we moved in almost 2 years ago.
But, as the time goes by and small imperfections and marks appear here and there, I'm very much afraid that the only trully efficient solution to vanish them, is indeed painting it.
And this is the part where I stop liking this wallpaper, as there is no way that I'll clinb over extra high ladders to paint this double highed,rented place! (And no chance in the world that the Mr of the house would see any reasoning behind it!)
So, these black parts that have appeared on your walls, might very probably be due to the heater placed underneath the window, which means that it's not so easy to clean, without making the area... greyish.
I would give it a try with a natural sponge - so that it survives the bumps - warm water and not too aggressive detergent so as not to melt the paper.
Having not been of great help,I 'm sure that others might offer better applicable solutions, which I'd love to try myself.
...have to go on with my jobs here and hope to soon be off to Mainz to the tea shop of my Chinese friend.
Enjoy your Spring cleaning and have a great weekend!
About those walls--I know the stuff of which you speak! That's what we've heard, as well: just paint over them! How/if you can clean them will depend on whether they're the kind that are made out of paper, or whether they're the waterproof kind. Perhaps someone else can be more specific.
Love your little trees!
I've also heard that to clean you just paint again. What a pain!
Secondly, although we hope you're not still in this apartment when you'll need to crank up the heat again, you can give the inside of the radiator a good clean. They sell these long bottle brush type of things in many places that will get right in there (unless you have a vacuum attachment that can get in there, turn the suckage amt way down though!).
However, I recommend the latex paint. Once we had that up there, we never saw dinginess again. I think the darkness is really a reaction of the paint to heat. I notice in my MIL's apt that her walls are also 'dingy' near the top. We're supposed to help her repaint, but honestly, I think it's really stupid to keep using so much paint every few years to keep your walls white. I find it wasteful of time, energy, paint, and money. Paint once with latex and be done with it!
ps - i am SO with you on the bumpy tapete! ugh. if we ever purchase a home/apt here of our own, we are definitely going to pay extra for the walls to be smooth!
Amie - in the newer buildings you are right - they are everywhere! But I love them as I had slim and awkward windowsills in all of my homes in the states (or none at all) so it's great to have them.
Ivy - Oh that's right, you like this wallpaper (I forgot!!!) and I hope I didn't offend you but it's very hard to keep clean so I no longer want it around! I can't imagine having it forever is what I mean. But it's not ugly or anything, just annoying to clean and also a bit yellowish at times depending on the light -- that I also do not like.
Have a nice weekend everyone!!!
Ugh, this wallpaper, I'm definitely in the 'hater' camp! Once I painted it with latex paint I could scrub and scrub and do no damage, but ideally I'd like smooth walls myself!
I have a question, you don't appear to have any screens in your windows. Are there so few bugs that you don't need them? If I opened the screens in our windows for just a minute, there would be bugs in the house.
The idea of scrubbing wallpaper with water is foreign to me. Wouldn't it disintegrate or come off?
...as this is definetely not my favorite wallpaper either, I just see it works well and "does a favour" to our current living place, coz of its architecture, adding some texture, which also absorbs the exteme light that enters from a huge window in a rather tiny apartment,spread in two etages!
I adore beautiful wallpapers and was intenting to wallpaper a wall,when I realised that to do that, I'd have to remove the bumpy one...something which would be too much work and reather inappropriate for a rented place.
And this how I also resulted to framing the wallaper samples I had ordered back in the summer (at the reading corner).The result trully satisfies me : )
Now to go back to the black stains, never mind there are none around the radiator, it seems to be this way, that the heat is gathered high up causing them (stains) to be created up there.
Sorry that there is no other trully appropriate cleaning method...in the end...better not to bother so much or refresh the room by painting it.
Happy weekend!
xo
Melis
xo
Melis
And, the wallpaper/wall texture does not look like it would be fun to clean. I'm already a bit concerned about it. And it seems to be everywhere!
Xenia
P.S. Your tulips are gorgeous!
The reason why the walls get these dark stains: Germans would usually buy "Dispersionsfarbe" because it is cheaper and the standard paint sold in a Baumarkt.
If I ever, ever happen to buy my own apartment or house I would do it this way: I would have the walls smoothly plastered and painted with silicate paint (Silikatfarbe). No dark stains! Washable! Eco- and health-friendlier!
Don't ask me why anyone knows...
You have to consider that it doesn't last on wall paper though, and if there happens to be dispersion paint on the walls already you will need a primer...
By the way, screens are quite uncommon in germany. You can buy some cheap stick-on tape and then attach mesh screens, or buy some after-market nice, metal framed screens. This may be the next project for us, we'll see how buggy of a summer it turns out to be!
Laura in Ludwigsburg
First of all, you don't have to use wall paper at all. Don't try to tell the Germans this but you don't. You can have a good plaster guy just flat plaster the walls with a fine plaster finish. The problem is (which is why the Germans don't like it) that you can get fine cracks in the surface.
So there is an invisible wall paper you can use. It's a film of fiberglass, is see through, applied with wall paper glue like normal, but has absolutely no texture and protects against the dreaded cracks. We used this throughout our two floor penthouse in Hamburg - although the wall paper guy thought I was a nutcase (who WOULDN'T want Rohfasertapeten - it's so BEAUTIFUL). The fiberglass film painted up perfectly.
What can I say, here in Italy we live with the cracks.
I'm a transplanted North American and have been living in Switzerland for 15 years. If your 'bumpy', almost chalky stucco-like walls are anything like mine were, then I understand your dilemma. I never had to clean an entire wall, but I would occasionally spot clean using the white cream non-abrasive cleanser for sinks (VIM), using a white dish cloth and that seemed to work fine. At other times, I found it quite successful to paint over the offending marks with Gesso (the artist's medium used to create a ground for paintings). You can buy it by the tub at any artist's section of a hardware store. The trick is that you apply it using crumpled up Kleenex tissues and dab it on, building it up. The effect produced simulates those bumps so you don't see brush strokes, and as Gesso is chalk-like when it dries, it also has the same finish.
With regards to the windows, I use cleaning alcohol with paper kitchen towels if I want streak free windows. I especially find it works really well for the outside parts because they degrease and get rid of that built up dust and black soot. You can purchase a bottle of cleaning alcohol at your local grocery store in the same section as the window cleaning products and 'Kalk' removers. A small amount of cleaning alcohol goes a long way.
I hope this can be helpful to you.