Stripping (Wallpaper) Ain't Fun

I had the day off earlier this week so I finally decided to tackle a project I've been putting off for over three years. I stripped the hideous 80's-era wallpaper off our bathroom walls. After spending nine hours sponging on wallpaper stripper and scraping off multiple layers of plastic, waterproof paper, I now understand why homeowners often paint right over their old wallpaper on all those home improvement shows. My house, built in 1987, unfortunately retains much of the same original owner's ideas of decor. When we bought the house, we didn't have an extra $50,000 to modernize the interior to our taste so we were stuck with 1980's carpets, walls and colors. Slowly, we've been repainting the house one room at a time. As the old owner's color palette ranged from neutered-vanilla-beige to subtle-yet-boring-barely-pink, anything was an improvement, so we've been covering the walls in different rooms in greens, yellows and reds. At this point, all that's left to do is the master bedroom/bath and dining room. The dining room is daunting, to say the least, as it's filled with large, heavy pieces of furniture that have to be moved, and the walls are covered in dark blue wallpaper. After this weekend, I'm not looking forward to removing it. Our bathroom was also covered in wallpaper in a pattern I like to call "Electric Vomit". The pattern was a shiny plastic white field dotted with silver and black specks and streaks. Who ever applied it did a pretty good job as, despite the fact that it was in a bathroom, where, after 20 years of shower generated steam and moisture, it was not bubbling or peeling up anywhere. I realize they chose that type of wallpaper because it's so moisture resistant — it's double-layered, with the top layer acting as a waterproof barrier. That very quality made the removal job so difficult. Turns out no matter how much I scored it, the chemical remover could not penetrate the top "plastic" layer. After two applications of remover, I peeled off the top layer only to discover that the bottom one was still stuck to the wall as well as the day it was applied. This required an additional three applications of the chemical stripper, and inch by inch scraping while it was still damp. Happily, it's done now. All I have to do is scrape the popcorn ceiling down to the sheet rock. That should be easy enough...