Wide-ranging wallpaper wonders

What was it about people, 30 years ago, that made them pick such a "variety" of then-attractive wallpaper, all in the same portion of the color spectrum?

Here is the delightful stuff in the kitchen, with bonus dirt from 30 years of pictures in the same place (the bunny is ours, for temporary contrast).


Here is the smallest upstairs bedroom, with matching curtains and water stains.


This is our room in all its bamboo glory. That paper may be even older and we don't hate quite as much since it's sort of arts-and-craftsy and the picture molding helps.


Our favorite in the heinous race is the stunning front hall disco effect stuff. At least it's not foil, too.

All unpapered walls are either white or beige and from what we can tell around the edges of doors and windows, always have been.
We are planning to come up with some nice schemes involving actual colors and hoping to get a lot more painting done this year than last, when all we managed was stripping the floral striped (beige of course) bathroom wallpaper and priming the walls.
It will be fun to see what shape the plaster is in and if walls were strategically papered for a reason...

Floor archaeology

Way too long since posting. We actually did do a few things, mostly decorative, but were too busy with birthdays and holidays to post to the blog; will try to catch up.


So, in the first floor bathroom, looking very carefully into the space between the beige tub and oak vanity, both from the mid-80's, you can see that the original 1-inch unglazed porcelain hex floor tiles are still there, under the far larger beige hex tiles that later covered them. We may find out more soon, if our chronic plumbing problem requires tearing into walls as one plumber thinks, and we take out the vanity, which is obviously set on top of the old tile, with the new
cut off around its edges.

Is there any hope for getting a later layer of ceramic tile off an older one or am I just kidding myself? I can be very patient with a scraper, hammer, chisel, etc.....
Perhaps worst case, we could add in new unglazed porcelain hex tile if the original is in too bad a shape.

We also want a nice retro-looking sink, such as from Vintage Tub or perhaps an older one from Salvage One. We'd most like a spiffy new dual-flush toilet that looks old, though those seem to be harder to find that just regular 1.6 gal low-flow models, at least if we aren't able to spend $1000+ just on a toilet.

More to come after further plumber consultations...