The mushroom stencil in my kitchen must die

Sept 28, 2026 · by Dot · 6 min read

When I moved into this house in 2019, the previous tenant left three things: a dead fern, a garage full of packing peanuts (still unexplained), and a mushroom border in the kitchen. Not painted freehand, obviously — a stencil, repeated around the room at chair-rail height, every mushroom identical, spaced with the dead-eyed regularity of a highway median. Seven years later it is still there, because I have been “getting to it.”

This is embarrassing to admit on a website called I Hate Stencil, so let me be precise about the failure. It's not laziness. I paint things for a living. It's that the border achieved the one thing a stencil does best: it made itself ignorable. Uniform repetition reads as structure, and structure reads as intentional, and intentional reads as “probably fine.” Freehand work has wobbles, and wobbles nag at you. Stencils don't nag. They just sit there, quietly gaslighting you about your own taste, forever.

The decision

In March I bought the scraper. In August I watched one (1) tutorial, which is my documented maximum. Last Saturday I put on the radio, made tea, and confronted the wall.

Here is what nobody tells you about removing a stencil border that has been sealed under two coats of landlord-grade paint: the scraper is the easy part. The hard part is that every pass reveals how the stencil was applied in the first place, and mine was applied over wallpaper. Over. Wallpaper. Some time in the early 2000s a person looked at wallpaper, looked at a mushroom stencil, and chose violence.

I did what any professional would do. I texted Kayla a photo and the words “guess.” She replied with a crying emoji and “the fern?” which, respect.

What actually worked

For those following along at home with their own kitchen crime scene: warm water and dish soap in a spray bottle, twenty minutes of patience per section, and a stiff plastic scraper — not metal, unless you enjoy retexturing drywall with your feelings. The border came off in long, satisfying curls, like the world's saddest gift wrap. Underneath: the wallpaper, which has its own small repeating leaf pattern, because of course it does. That's next year's problem. Or the year after. I contain multitudes and none of them own a steamer.

Where the border met the cabinets someone had stencil-mushed a half mushroom to make it fit, which is the most honest moment in the whole room. Even the original stencil-er knew. Even they heard the tiny voice saying this is wrong, and they answered it with a squashed mushroom and the resolve to never speak of it again.

What goes up instead

Nothing, for now. The wall is patchy and primed and staying bare for a month, on principle. When I do paint it, it'll be one hand-lettered line of something opinionated, slightly crooked, in my own wobble, at human scale. The kitchen has earned it.

And in the interest of fairness, per manifesto clause 5: the previous tenant was probably tired, it was probably 11pm, and the stencil was probably the least bad option at the craft store. I have made peace with the person. The mushrooms, less so. They went into the burn pile early, ahead of the next party, with full honours. Scraper cleaned. Tea finished. Wall bare.

Getting to it: done.