I am planning on re-painting my kid room, and that required removal of the wallpaper border (with the cat, fiddle, dish, spoon, etc) that runs around the middle of the wall.
It is a paper-backed border that I had to wet to stick on, so it had its own glue when it was manufactured.
Any suggestions?
IMHO, the best way to remove wallpaper is to rent a steamer. It’s been a few years, so I’m not sure how much $ it costs, but compared to the hassel of the chemical removers (which never work as well) and the rotary-pin-hole-maker-then-water thing (which never works), it’s a breeze. Yeah, it costs a few bucks more, but it will only take you a couple hours instead of a couple days.
Good luck.
Steamers can work very well, but can cause lots of collateral wall damage & may be overkill for just a border.
See if you can pull off the border. If it comes off in little shred, gently score it with a knife (or use a paper tiger ) and wet down with hot water, to which you can add fabric softener, white vinegar, or a commercial wallpaper remover like DIF.
It might take a few passes to get the paper back & glue removed, but since you didn’t add any paste to what was already on the border, it shouldn’t be too bad.
I used the paper tiger on my walls and it worked like a dream. However, my painter used something Strong and Evil on my border, and it simply wouldn’t come up. I painted over it and I’m planning on hanging a thin panel of wood or something over it to give it a 3-D effect. I’ll paint something groovy on it.
Hehe. Bad painter, no cookie. It’s what I do for a living. Painting, not cookies.
I’ve encountered this. You can float over the whole border (prime with shellac, then go over it with a wide swathe of drywall mud & sand flush.) But that is a pain in the ass.
I’m thinking the 3D effect would be easier and look cooler, though. 
Sherwin-Williams sells wallpaper remover, as does Home Depot. You mix it with water, apply with a sponge, wait a bit and then use the paint scraper to remove.
It’s worked for me just fine.
good luck.
I just re-did two kid bedrooms. In one, I removed the border by getting a good grip on the edge, pulling until I could stand in the middle of the room, and revolving while pulling. It came away easily, in one piece, leaving no trace. I could not believe my luck. In the other there was were a border and a false wainscoting of wallpaper. I used my handheld steam cleaner (as seen on TV) and a little plastic pot scraper. It came away in layers, but there was not much damage to the paint underneath, and no damage to the wall texture. I washed the surface with a weak solution of dish detergent, rinsed well, let it dry, and re-painted the room.
I see wallpaper removal as a service to humanity, and the installation of wallpaper – especially heavily glued borders – as an undertaking of karmic debt.
I just pulled all the paper down in a bathroom. The whirlygiggy thing and DIF worked great. Saturate the paper with the DIF, let it soak in and the paper practically falls off on it’s own.
This kind of border is usually very easy to remove. I did it hundreds of times as a painter.
Just get yourself a bucket of dishsoap and water (don’t use the kind with lotion) and a large cloth. Soak about half a wall’s worth of border then go back and it should peel right off and not leave any glue at all. If there are any traces of glue, just wipe off with that same cloth.
Other types of wallpaper/border aren’t nearly as easy to remove, and it gets even harder if it’s been on for many years, which I’m assuming yours wasn’t. Add the fact that you’re dealing with a bedroom and not a bathroom or kitchen where things get steamy and dry, steamy and dry, and I don’t think you’ll have much trouble at all.
The ease of wallpaper removal greatly depends on what you walls are made of. If they’re modern walls, constructed of drywall, it’s a lot more difficult than it is if the walls are in an old house which is made of plaster.
When my grandmother and I used to fix-up old houses, we would remove the often dozens of layers of wallpaper with a bottle of hot water spiked with vinegar. We would spray down the paper, let it sit for a while, and then scrape off with flat, metal spatulas. (Like the kind you use for spreading wall mud.) It would sometimes take a couple of doses, but it would usually peel right off.
You can really soak down the paper on plaster walls to get it off, but you can’t do the same thing with drywall.
It also depends on what kind of wallpaper it is. If it’s regular PAPER, not vinyl, it comes off a lot easier.
thanks… for paper-based walpaper on plaster walls, this appears to be a relatively straight-forward job…
I also recommend DIF and a paper tiger – took down the border in our study without hassle.
–Cliffy
Last time I did this, three rooms worth, I just grabbed a corner and simply peeled it off. It tore in places & had to be restarted but it mostly came all down.
I washed off the remaining glue & paper bitties with a sponge soaked in warm water.
Seemed to work just fine.
Oh, one thing I forgot to tell you:
If you use my grandma’s method of hot water and vinegar in a spray bottle, make sure you put down a tarp-- don’t think you can just pick it all up once you’re done. It will stick to hardwood floors like . . . well, like glue, and it’s also often a bitch to get it up off of carpet.
This is what has worked for me several times. Very easy.