Side Entrance Progress

This weekend Celia and I attacked the wallpaper paste on the side entrance walls. Celia likes to use the garment steamer and I use the Zinsser spray. As we have removed the wallpaper in this room (and the girl's bedroom) the we have been repeatedly surprised to find signatures on the wall.  This weekend, I found Nancy Strandberg's dated Mar 5 1990 and Celia found an unknown person dated Apr 24th 1913.  I have tried to reach out to Nancy since she seems to still live locally.  (No response yet. UPDATE 12/19/2011: We have been told that Nancy was/is a professional wallpaperer)

Apr 24th 1913

During our work on the entryway, I decided to take down the coat hooks.  It is basically a painted board with about 6 hooks attached to it.  It appears that it has been a LONG time since anyone had bothered to take it down. It turned out to hold a couple of surprises:
1. The board is walnut with beautiful grain.  I am looking forward to stripping the paint adding a few coats of shellac and hanging it back up in it's original spot.

2.  Under the coat hook were two layers of old wallpaper.  We like the blue one!  It is the oldest layer.  Both were carefully steamed off the wall and are being kept safe.