I am going to be a self disclosing idiot with this one.
Some 20 or more years ago I hot glued all of my pictures and knick knacks to the kitchen walls. There are also a few hot glued items in other rooms and some in my work office.
I never considered this a problem until recently when I thought I might hire someone to do some painting.
When I described the necessary pre painting preparation to my handyman he was stunned. There are ways to get everything off the walls but it involves a bit of strong alcohol and a plastic paint scraper.
If you don’t want to use alcohol (I didn’t know that worked on hot glue in the first place), try heat.
Are you trying to get the pictures off the wall or the residual glue? If it’s the pictures, I’d try heating the glue with a hair dryer until it’s pliable enough to pull the pictures off the wall.
As for the glue remaining on the wall. I’d still try heat to see if it could be pulled off cleanly. If not, another option I’d consider is grabbing it with a pliers and yanking it off. If it pulls right off, great, if it takes the outer paper layer of the drywall with it, the painter should be able to repair it and it’ll probably look better than if they tried to paint over the remaining hot glue.
Come to think of it, if leaves a fine layer of glue on the wall, I wonder if going over it with some spackle, or even spray paint will give your paint something to grab onto.
I would absolutely not use heat.
It will soften the glue, but that just makes it more sticky and gooey.
What you want to do is use cold. Much harder to do on the wall (maybe some freeze spray), but if you can get the glue cold enough, it will snap right off.
I like the cold idea, and a cheap and easy way is to get a can of keyboard duster and hold it upside down. It will come out as a liquid and is extremely cold, then pull on it with pliers.
I hadn’t thought of using cold. An upside down duster can is a good, if smelly, way to get something to freeze in a hurry.
Also, I’m WAGing that the OP has plaster walls, not drywall. So maybe ignore my suggestion to yank the glue off with the outer layer of drywall to be repaired later.
Hot glues are rarely soluble in alcohol. Mineral spirits is your best option and I’d experiment with a hair dryer to see if that speeds up removal. It’s going to be hard to get it off without damaging the wall.
Sure, but as someone noted upthread, removing a bit of the surface sheetrock (primarily the paper) is a pretty easy fix, and if one is painting one should take some time to clean up the walls anyway.
I assumed this thread was going to be about the feeling when you are sticking two pieces of something together and you get the glue on the tip of your finger. That is also hot glue misery.