We are stripping wallpaper from 3 areas in our home. Looks like we have hit the trifecta.
Area 1 is a relative joy to remove. The paper and the backing peel off together in nice large strips.
Area 2 is manageable. The paper peels off easily, leaving the backing which can be wet down and scraped.
Area 3 is a bitch! The paper tears very readily, and is very tightly adhered to the backing. Right now I’m scraping the paper off with a razor, and intend to wet and scrape the backing. But this is a very tedious process.
Anyone have any experience using any of the chemical methods? Or a steamer? Some on-line sites describe the chemicals as wonderful. Others describe them as useless or worse, after damaging their wallboard with the scorer. Whatever else you can say about my current method, at least it is cheap (of everything but my time)!
This is my dining room, and we will probably paint it, so I want to be sure I do not damage the walls.
The best quote I found on line was "In short, removing wallpaper sucks, no matter how you do it. It is always a wet, sloppy mess."
I have a steamer, but I find them messy to use (because the glue melts and the paper comes off in relatively small pieces, it gies everywhere. What we tend to do now is sponge warm water onto the paper all over (after peeling off the glossy vinyl layer, if there is one), wait 10 minutes and scrape it off with a scraper tool.
Mrs. Geek and I removed wallpaper in our dining room that was under panelling as well (imagine a few million nail holes to spackle and sand on top of the work you are doing). We got a couple of spray bottles from the dollar store and filled them with HOT water, and sprayed down areas of the wallpaper we were working on and let it soak for a bit, then attacked it with a scraper. It ended up not being anywhere near as bad of a job as I had been expecting. The hot water worked wonders for loosening the glue.
You may want to try DIF. That is the chemical remover…which will not damage your walls. It is a gel-based and non-toxic (I know this as I had it drip right into my eye.) You can mix it with warm water. And I also suggest using a putty knife instead of a blade scraper.
My home has vinyl wall paper. I would love to tear it down and have simple white walls, but I fear that it would be an huge effort and since I am not a man who enjoys such work, I am very reluctant. Has anyone experience with vinyl wall paper?
Pepper Mill and I hate wallpaper. We remnoved all of it from our house. Pepper Mill used DIF and other chemical removers, along with a “Paper Tiger”, a toothed rolling thing for scoring wallpaper. I used a steamer, and I think it the better way to do it. Use it properly, and the paper just falls off. You may want to wear work gloves. It helps if you fabricate your own little “steam-holders” for concentrating the stem in hard-to-reach places.
I removed some paper boarders that had been up since 1976. I used the “paper tiger” as mentioned by Cal to perforate the paper. I then sprayed on a adhesive solvent made by Zinzer or Zisser. It’s kind of a blue thick liquid that doesn’t run down the wall. Spray it on right out of the bottle. Then I used a scraper that I think was made by the same folks who make the paper tiger. It has kind of a blunt blade with a sharp 90 degree edge taht strips off the paper without damaging the wall.
It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, and of course it wasn’t a whole wall.
I removed some paper boarders that had been up since 1976. I used the “paper tiger” as mentioned by Cal to perforate the paper. I then sprayed on a adhesive solvent made by Zinzer or Zisser. It’s kind of a blue thick liquid that doesn’t run down the wall. Spray it on right out of the bottle. Then I used a scraper that I think was made by the same folks who make the paper tiger. It has kind of a blunt blade with a sharp 90 degree edge taht strips off the paper without damaging the wall.
It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, and of course it wasn’t a whole wall.
Vinyl is supposed to be easier. If the wall was prepared right (ie primed), once you get a corner pulled up you can peel off the sheet. It worked for me that way in the kitchen, without chemicals or steaming, and the wall underneath had been smoothed and primed.
Peeling old paper off plaster walls in a bedroom was a whole lot more work. So I did good prep in there, following all directions, and put on new vinyl. (It was worth it.)
Mrs. Algernon and I have removed a lot of wallpaper over the years.
We’ve tried a lot of commercial products, but for our last attempt we tried something a friend recommended. We used fabric softener. It worked better than anything we had used previously. Bought a big jug of Downy and poured it into a sprayer.
Just spray a wall. Let the wallpaper get as wet as possible. Then tear off as much as you can. Re-spray any backing left behind and scrape it off.
With vinyl, you have to perforate the “paper” first with a little hand-held do-jiggy, but then you’d have minute little holes to repair. Easy to fix though.
I spent maybe 2 hrs with my trusty razor blade last night, and got maybe 1/3 of the paper off. In fact, I’m getting quite good at this! Figure I’ll finish with the paper in the next couple of days, and then wet and scrape the backing in one fell swoop over the weekend.
Then Mrs D will simply have to choose the paint. We are replacing our cherry Queen Anne dining set with dark oak mission. Much of our house is pretty arts & crafts. Tho we have historically been pretty much off-white folks in terms of paint, we are considering going with a bolder color this time - maybe a red or yellow. Maybe one color above and another below the chair rail.
We want to do any painting done before the floors are refinished a week or so before Thanksgiving.
Plain old water does (did) the trick for me just as well as any chemical. As long as you can have patience in the process.
Spray walls liberally with water. Leave for 15 mins. (to soak in)
Spray again, leave for a further 15 mins.
Scrape paper off with wallpaper scraper, spraying any other parts as you go along.
I have done a whole house (with 4 layers of paper on the walls) in less than 6 hours like this. Makes a hell of a mess to tidy up though.
Dinsdale, when you say razor blade, are you really talking about usingthis sort of thing? Or what?
Well, it’s in a holder. Makes it essentially like a utility knife.
Like on the 2d page of this site. http://www.ctatools.com/catalogs/knivesscra.pdf
But, yeah - simply a single edge razor blade. Cheap and easy to replace at the first sign of dulling. I figured just about every renter/homeowner had at least one of these in addition to their utility knife(ves). I know my dad had several as long as I can remember.
One main reason I’m leaning towards my present method, is because of the relative cleanliness. I don’t have huge blocks of time to spend on it, so I would have to be prepping and cleaning up all the time. And these are relatively discrete areas in a fully furnished house we are living in, an additional incentive to keeping down the mess.
It’s not such a huge job, and my time is relatively cheap. No big deal to spend an hour or so a night in there listening to the radio.
Man, I’m getting really good at this! Just about finished last night. Apparently the “grain” of the paper runs vertically. I place my razor blade at the edge, and push it upwards, using my other hand to press it into the wall and maintain equal pressure holding it flat to avoid the edges from digging in. It is quite easy to tear off a continuous strip all the way top the ceiling. Sure, each strip is only an inch or 2 wide, but the ease is such that you can swiftly move right across the wall. And the long dry strips are easy to dispose of.
Then, spray the backing liberally with hot water. Wait a minute or 2, and scrape the backing off. Again, use your non-dominant hand to maintain firm and even blade pressure.
Ain’t it wonderful when you get the hang of a home repair project, right when you are just about done with it?
