Do You Remember Wallpaper Cleaner?

My grandpa, after his career with the circus and owning and operating movie theaters and a short foray into the burlesque business, settled down for the rest of his life to being a painter and wallpaper hanger.

He was a master at both, but if paperhanging were an Olympic sport, he would have taken Gold, Silver AND Bronze.

He was a small man, barely 5'5" and sinewy, but he could handle those incredibly heavy ladders and platforms like The Incredible Hulk.

Back then, wallpaper was just that....paper...and you had to brush on the paste and get that paper up on the wall FAST and RIGHT the first time or you would have wasted the paper.

There was no repositioning like there is with today's vinyl-backed paper.

That little man could slap a 12' section of wallpaper up and line up the seams (and the patterns) like an artist. He was the Rembrandt of paper and paint.

Paint? Oh, that man could paint a wall smoother than a baby's bottom.

Me, I never got the gene.

hearlady said:

Is this it?
View attachment 488026

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That's the stuff, but I don't remember what the packaging looked like. And it is marketed today as Silly Putty.

My mother and grandmother used to hang wallpaper on the bumpy old horsehair plastered walls in my grandmother’s old farmhouse.

I only learned two things.

Start and end the room behind a door to hide any fatal mismatch in the pattern.

Don’t even think about hanging wallpaper, life is too short!

Aunt Bea said:

My mother and grandmother used to hang wallpaper on the bumpy old horsehair plastered walls in my grandmother’s old farmhouse.

I only learned two things.

Start and end the room behind a door to hide any fatal mismatch in the pattern.

Don’t even think about hanging wallpaper, life is too short!

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The fatal mismatch!!! I remember learning about that. Why I remember anything about hanging wallpaper is a mystery. I could not have been more that 5 years old.