So, my very first project in my new house, while the electricians are replacing most of the wiring, was to clean the huge walk in pantry. I thought this would be a 15 minute job…well it turned into a 3 day one! There was a bubble on one of the shelves and I started to pick at it, only to discover that there was brown sticky shelf liner on all the shelves. It was 18″ wide, which is the depth of the shelves, so the edges of the shelves were several layers of paint. It took me a good 3-4 hours to pull up all the painted shelf liner, because I do have a LOT of shelves. Who complains about too many shelves? Nobody…except when they’re pulling up painted shelf liner!
After shelf paper removal, the shelves were sticky with leftover residue, the liner had been put down over unprimed pine boards! This was the worst part. I tried Fantastic, cold soapy water, paint thinner, warm soapy water and sanding. After a day of that, enough of the stickiness was gone and I was sick of trying anymore and I decided to try painting! Although the first coat of paint had some alligatoring over areas where there was still some sticky stuff, by the 4th coat things looked pretty good and I declared it DONE!!!
Here they are in all their glory!
While stripping the liner off I found that the small shelf on the left side was made from an old sign, I decided not to paint it to show off the history of the house a bit!
Do I wish that I hadn’t picked at that bubble and created 3 days of sweaty work? Yes!! Am I glad that they’re better shelves now? Yes!
3 Responses
Yup, I would have picked that bubble too! When we moved into our house I pulled off vinyl wallpaper in the bathroom only to find 4 layers of paper wallpaper under it. What we had to do to this house when we moved in convinced me that if I ever move again it will be into a brand new home, designed and built to our specs. Unless the lottery is in our future, we are here and til death do us part, lol.
How cool having that sign for a shelf!!! Kudo’s to you, lady, for all that work!!!! Nice job!!!
Too late for this job, but if you ever need to remove sticky stuff again, the product “Goo Gone” is very effective. I first used it years ago for taking the remains of stickers off a child’s bedroom wall, and the same bottle has served me well for other things o ver the years.