OK, so I strip the bathroom wallpaper off, and lo, what do I see? Huge patches of spackle. What does this mean? Most likely, it means that the previous tenants of the house stripped the previous wallpaper off, ripping out huge chunks of the top layer of drywall in the process, either by overzealous application of a steamer or overuse of a chemical stripper.
Not a problem in itself, since it’s fairly easy to do. However, after stripping, they had to patch the wall in numerous places, wait for it to dry, then sand, then wipe the dust away, then you know what they did?
That’s right. They put MORE ugly-assed wallpaper up. Badly. It overlapped by an inch in places. It was angled in others. It had started to peel everywhere.
We’re painting. Well, actually, priming and painting, since there’s no way we’ll ever get the wall uniform enough not to be a little patchy without primer.
Why even bother with wallpaper? It’s hideous. It peels. It rots. It’s inevitabe that someday, you’ll look up at the zombiefied mess on your wall and think, godDAMN, that’s ugly.
Paint. It’s easy, attractive, and above all, it’s so damn much easier to change if you get the urge.
Oh, LORD how I hate doing walls. Painting, tape and mud, sheetrock. UUUUGGGGGGGHHH. I feel for you.
Don’t know how far you are, but one solution we used to use (my dad had a construction/renovating company) was to texture the walls. Depends upon how much work you want to do. It’s a little more mud than just taping and mudding (properly called “pooping” I’ve heard), but a lot less sanding and mudding. Especially if the walls are not square and plumb, or if there are defects like old wallpaper, cracks and so on.
Wallpaper, on the bathroom?? What a novel concept; no, really, I´d never thought of the possibility. :dubious:
What´s next? parquet on the garage?, carpeting the roof??? :smack:
Is there no common sense left in this world?
In any case, I´m glad you´re on your way to restore some dignity to that house.
I agree. I just don’t get wallpaper. It seems more trouble than it’s worth. Is putting that ugly stuff up really that much harder than painting? Blegh.
Our new house has fucking wallpaper in it, too. After weeks of gunk, scraping, praying, spraying and more praying, I came up with a foolproof plan. FIrst peel the fucking vinyl off of the wallpaper, then take the largest mud knife they make and use the edge to completely rip the entire surface of the wallboard off. THis ensures uniformity as long as you’re removed EVERYTHING down to the paper layer that comes on the sheetrock.
THen you put a layer or two of mud on the surface, tape where necessary and then roll on some texture. We’ve got a system going now LoL, but seriously, fuck wallpaper-even as an accent. My brother’s room has one accent wall done and it looks horrid.
Our whole house is wallpapered - except the bathrooms, which are tiled on the floors and walls and fake wood paneled on the ceilings.
You don’t HAVE to have patterned wallpaper. Most of our walls are simple, plain colors with textured paper. The living room we two-toned. The upper half of each wall is a very light blue, and the lower half is a very light orange/brown kind of color. We’ve got a patterned border strip that covers the joint between the two colors. It looks pretty damned good.
My wife and I do all of our interior stuff ourselves. She’s good at hanging wallpaper, and I’m good at helping her hang wallpaper
If you’d ever seen what passes walls and plaster over here, you’d understand very quickly why you MUST wallpaper. I mean, it is either that or hire someone from the US to come and do some mud work - and the only guy I know well enough that he might do it for a reasonable price is my fucked up cousin, and I really don’t want to expose my German neighbors to that kind of freakazoid.
So, anyway, fuck poorly hung wallpaper and keep it the hell out of the bathroom.
The pinhead who used to own my house papered over bead board with cardboard and newspaper. And used NASA-strength glue, so no amount of scraping, steaming, or cursing would remove it. I drywalled over it.
Too bad I damaged the newspaper. It was 1940s big band musician newspaper stuff. Very cool…if it wasn’t soldered to my fucking walls, that is.
My Gawd, that’s a bad idea. You’re weakening the wallboard that way. Even with a skim coat of mud, you will run into future problems like cracks and nail/screw heads popping thru. Too late for you, but to everyone else, don’t do that!
As for papering a bathroom, we use vinyl in our jobs where the client wants a papered bathroom or kitchen. In fact, we use vinyl probably 90% of the time people want a “wallpaper” product on their walls. Done right, it is sometimes superior to painting.
By “done right” we mean that the wall has to be finished. Yes, a perfectly smooth wall (as much as possible), and then sealed, and finally sizing applied properly. When this is done, and a relatively competant paper/vinyl hanger puts up the product, it will last a long time and look fabulous.
As for poorly done jobs in the first place, yeah, I hate dealing with it, too. I just charge more.
Wallpaper is Satan’s own decorating choice, and all those who are on the side of Good and Righteousness should rebuke it.
The previous owners of Casa Amanita had some sort of fetish for cheap-ass wallpaper. So far, I’ve only managed to remove the crap 1980s-looking wallpaper goddam border in one room. I haven’t had the heart to rent a steamer and go after the giftwrap looking wallpaper in the bathrooms. Considering the curses I heaped on the person who installed the wallpaper border that I had to remove, I expect they will spontaneously combust from the HATE I spew at them when I try to remove entire walls of it.
Personally, I think wallpaper has it’s place. It should be used line the walls of the rectal cavities of designers who recommend or use it.
My house was previously owned by someone who obviously had stock in a wallpaper company. There were four rooms (out of 14) that didn’t have WP, and two of the four have wood paneling. Some rooms have two layers and, it is on so well, I just mudded the seams and painted over it. The master bath had it on the walls and on the fucking ceiling. It took me days to get that crap off. The halls have it too and now it’s starting to peel, so I’m going to have to remove it.
How do you figure? The wallboard still has it’s paper layer intact, the screws are taped over, the whole thing is re-mudded and then textured. Just like a regular wall. I think the confusing part of my post is where I say, “take the largest mud knife they make and use the edge to completely rip the entire surface of the wallboard off.”
What I really meant to come across(as you can tell from the sentence after that), was that the first 2 layers of wallpaper(the bottom construction grade layer and the decorative layer) need to be chipped off to the paper surface of the sheetrock. The tape joints are still intact, the paper on the rock is intact, and there is no appreciable strength or rigidity lost either. I’ve even gone over this with several professionals and they didn’t think simply ripping the layers of wallpaper off and remudding would be a big problem.
No problem NoClueBoy. When I went and reread my post I came to the same conclusion you did. We took great pains to not gouge the rock too much-and it’s all turning out great!
Unfortunately, there are walls in existence that utterly need wallpaper. Case in point – Casa Kiz. We live in an old house where drywall doesn’t exist. Point to any random wall and you’ll find bumps ranging from the itty-bitty to stuff that’d be more suitable on a topographic relief map. There’s no way we could just paint and let it be. Ergo, wallpaper.
I don’t hate wallpaper, but it’s not my cup of tea either. We have a muted beigy-white tiny diamond pattern here. Disguises the bumps nicely.
I cannot imagine what we’d do if we were to take down the wallpaper (it’s been up awhile) and prep the walls to paint. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Bumps? Are there aliens in there or something? WTF?
Feh! Try to get wallpaper off a concrete wall (the preferred method of construction in this corner of the world). Not an easy task. Fortunately, since wallpaper is rather expensive and does not agree with the climate, I only encountered the problem once in my many, many previous dwellings.
Now, if that was a prevalent problem (like it seems it is where you live) I suggest you simply torch the place down to cinders. Always work.
Great jumping Jehosephat. Seal the damned walls before you put up wallpaper. A proper sealant keeps the wallpaper from sinking into the wall. youjust want to stick the stuff up. If you don’t seal the wall, the paste partially dissolves the back of the paper and the mess soaks into the wall and it’ll take an act of Congress to get it loose again. The shit just soaks right in and becomes one with the wall instead of just being stuck to it.
They sell sealant around these parts, but if you can’t get any then paint the walls with a slightly thinned cheap ass white paint - be sure to make the coat opaque, though.
Fer shit’s sake people. Just do it right and it’ll work so much better.
Truth to tell, I’d rather wallpaper than paint. There’s zero chance of spilling paint in the house when you wallpaper.
Also, if you paint, you’d be better off putting up a plain, white wallpaper first. After you’ve repainted the room a few times, you can repaper and get rid of all of the old layers of paint.
