I Am Not A Natural
Good effing God. What a sorry project this has turned out to be. At this point, I think our only solution is to move.
Working with drywall is like working with pastry dough. I was supposed to cut out (at a bevel!!!) a piece and use that to recut where the hole is so that the piece fits into the hole. It was like the pie crust recipe where they tell you to fold the dough into quarters and then unfold it into the pie plate. CAN'T BE DONE.
And the small hole didn't work because I didn't buy the right thing and I didn't like the stuff I bought. So I didn't even get to use my putty knife.
As I was sitting on the floor swearing and trying to remember how to put the drill in reverse so I could remove some screws (this was after taking about 10 minutes to figure out how to put the blade in my new utility knife) Bob came in to tell me he was going to Dinners Done Right to make us some dinners for the next month. Nice role reversal, eh?
Since the drywall was a bust, I went on to the wallpaper, first scoring it with my paper tiger and then spraying it with some warm water. Then I stood back and waited for it to fall off the wall.
Apparently this wallpaper was installed with a titanium alloy adhesive. It took forever before I could even scrape a tiny corner up and it's coming off in wispy fragments. And I'm not sure, but I don't think that's even a real wall underneath. It looks like a prop from a grade school play about a land with no real walls. Assuming I ever get all the wall paper off, I'm going to be sanding and/or priming and/or patching these "walls" for the rest of my life. Especially if I keep complaining about it and not doing it.
It's safe to say I'm not going to going into the home improvement business anytime soon.