Family Room Re-do: Update and Wallpaper

Oy!  This is going to be a lot more work than I thought.  But it's too late to turn back now, I've already started tearing off the wallpaper!  Damaged walls where the wallpaper has stripped away some of the drywall finish; in one corner all the way down to the metal corner bead:

Yesterday afternoon my friend Ann, who drives (I do not) and loves Menard's as much as I do, met up with me and we went to - Menard's!  I got my Dutch Boy paint/primer.  When did paint get so damn expensive?  Geez!  Two gallons of the Family Tree (taupe) color and one gallon of the Superhide White (warm white) color.  Three gallons cost me a little over $90. RIDICULOUS!  And while it is primer/paint in one, when I mentioned that the walls had not been painted in YEARS and might suck up a lot of paint, the clerk recommended 2 coats.  So where am I saving any labor?  Prime first and then put on a coat of paint, or not separately prime and put on 2 coats of combined primer/paint.  NOT SAVING ANY LABOR.  Stupid moi -- I should have bought the regular satin finish paint without the primer in it and saved some $.  I've got at least two gallons of primer sitting on the basement landing that I could have used.  Well - will use anyway because the lower part of the walls will have to be primed before I put up the new wallpaper.  DUH.  Should have saved myself a few bucks on the white color, at the least, by getting a regular gallon of satin finish...

Picked up plastic drop clothes, rollers, etc. etc.

And then last night I started removing the wallpaper and border.  The paper is not coming off clean in most areas.  That means I will have to wet down the residue and scrape it off.  YECH.  The paper has also taken off parts of the drywall finish with it.  That means I will have to spackle and fill, sand and prime before I can put up the new textured wallpaper.  Unfortunately, more drywall finish is coming off than anticipated.  More work.  YECH.

I need to take everything off the bookshelves and put them somewhere (probably the garage) to get at the back wall, including pulling the entertainment center (which weighs a ton) away from the wall so I can get back there to work.  YECH.  Where am I going to put all of those books and memorabilia?
On a happier note, I have wasted spent hours since 8 a.m. today shopping online for paintable textured wallpaper.

I really got sick of looking and looking and looking at textured papers.  The ones I finally decided I liked the best:

25" repeat

12" repeat

25" repeat

Well darlings, you know about wallpaper repeats!  It would potentially WASTE a ton of paper to order the scrolled leaves, which I really liked the best.  Even the small leaf pattern (center image) I was shocked to see has a 12" repeat.  Damn!

So, I looked at some "stripes" and stries, including a beadboard.  Hated them all, particularly the beadboard (I'm just not a vertical chick, it seems). The advantage (so I thought) to a stripe or strie is that there would be no repeat to worry about, I could just cut the paper to size and slap those suckers up on the wall without worrying about pattern matching.  That would save me ordering at least one extra "double-roll" because I would not have to be paranoid about matching and waste.  I hated these the least:

12" repeat!  Say what?  How can a strie have a repeat???

25" repeat.  WHAT?

No repeat!  Now what is the difference, I ask you, between
this one and the middle one???

After staring at the blocks I printed out for what seemed like forever, I decided I liked NONE of these stries.

And so, I went back to the drawing board, and I think I am going to buy this one:

It has a 6-1/4" repeat which I'm not thrilled about but will waste a lot less paper and this large-"ivy leaf" pattern appeals to me much more than any stripe or strie I looked at.  I looked and looked and looked and feel like my eyes are falling out right about now.  ENOUGH!