Green, orange, & gold floral wall on living room stairway in 1981
.
Let me start off by saying that I always lived in nice homes growing up. My Mom put a lot of hard work and creativity into every place we lived. Our homes were always clean, welcoming, and well-decorated. She still maintains that same standard in her home today. In fact, her taste just seems to keep getting better with time and she really knows how to make a house into a home.
That said, I always have to giggle a bit when I look back through some of our family photos. My Mom sure loved her some wallpaper! lol! There are some very wild walls as backdrops in our pictures. Wallpaper was definitely more popular in the 70s and 80s than it is now, but I never knew anyone who had as much wallpaper as we did. It was all nicely done because I never really thought about it at the time. It was just part of our living landscape. But now it sure sticks out to me!
We had the obligatory velvet and foil wallpaper of the 1970s. It’s a wonder any of us came out of that era unscathed.
.
Even my Dad’s home office had a groovy wallpapered wall. I thinking this was about 1976?
.
My bedroom always had wallpaper. When it was time to redecorate, the question wasn’t “what color do you wan the walls painted?”, it was “what wallpaper do you want?” I must have really liked this print because I chose it in pink for my next bedroom! This might be 1977? I need to verify dates with my Mom. Oh, and I thought I was really clever sleeping in this cap because it helped me keep rollers in my hair. I can’t believe how grubby those stuffed animals were though. Ewww!
.
Same wallpaper, different color scheme. I also have to comment that every girl I knew growing up had this same bedroom furniture (white with gold painted accents) and almost every girl I knew had a canopy bed. This was one of my favorite bedrooms. I loved the pink and green combo. I’m thinking this picture was taken around 1979?
.
This was in my Mom and Dad’s bedroom. Wild! Oh, and I almost always dressed up as a gypsy for Halloween. I was cool like that. Probably 1980 here.
.
My Mom put this wallpaper in the nursery when she was pregnant with my brother. She didn’t know if she was having a boy or a girl so she chose something that would work for both. Definitely a visually stimulating room for a baby. Circa 1983.
.
The worst thing about all of this wallpaper? I helped take most of it down which is NOT a fun job! I vowed that I would never have wallpaper in a house I lived in. So what did I do? The first house we bought had wallpaper in every room. I kid you not. Every room.
My son and brother in 1997. It was an old house. It was the most house we could afford so we went for size over beauty. I stripped wallpaper in every room. Not only did I strip wallpaper, I stripped YEARS worth of wallpaper. The previous owners had lived there for 40 + years and they obviously went through as many wallpaper phases as my Mom did – but they didn’t ever bother to remove the old layer before putting up a new one! It was an endless amount of work for several years. The kitchen walls were so damaged by the time I removed all the wallpaper that I had to put up more wallpaper to cover them up.
That is why even though wallpaper is making a comeback, I will NEVER put it on my walls!
.
I also just want to say that I’m not completely innocent here. I actually did sponge paint my entire living room purple once!
I guess someday my kids can blog about that.
…
Did you (or do you) have wallpaper in your house? Do you love it? Hate it? Don’t mind it? What were the walls like in the house you grew up in? All great things to document on a Memory Monday!
…
