Your success will depend on how the wallpaper was installed. If the wall was properly prepared and sized, you might be able to wet it down and peel it off in strips (you will think “why are all those folks whining? This is easy!”). Otherwise you could be in a situation where every square inch is a hard fought battle and you will give up and wallboard over it. I’ve had both, and some in between.
Good luck and let us know how it ends up.
Hire a professional to do the project, from start to finish. Wallpaper is NOT a DIY project.
Years ago, I worked with a woman who had recently gone through a messy divorce. At some point, she said that she and her ex had wallpapered a room, and I said, “Now I know why you got divorced!” :smack: I then apologized, and she said, “You’re not the first person who’s said that.”
:o
Don’t do this yourself.
My house was much like you described, all rooms had to be stripped. I bought good large sponges and a spray bottle and I used plaster knives, at least 5”, for actual stripping. The method was: start early, have a barrel and garbage bag ready. Peel off what you can by hand, trash it, wet down what you can’t with light soapy water. Go have breakfast. Come back, wet it all down again. Go check email. Answer emails. Come back, wet it all down again. Find something else to do for a half hour. Wet it down again, now start stripping. If it’s not half-falling off the walls, wet it again until it is. If you are afraid to gouge the wall you’re using too much pressure. I’d be gently picking at seams and pulling the paper off in 4’ strips, and letting them fall directly into the barrel.
The walls weren’t damaged and showed no adverse effects. We cleaned and painted them afterwards.
My last wallpaper fiasco resulted in me eventually hiring someone to remove all the sheet rock in a 1/2 bath.
The wallpaper was peeling in a small 5’x6’ bathroom, so I figured “This will be easy, I’ll take it down, clean it up, and paint it.” Layer 1 pealed of, not to bad, to reveal layer 2 below that. Layer 2 was partially removed, and apparently had been placed directed on the sheet rock, with no primer or paint below it. So rather than take it all off, layer 1 had been added on top. :smack:
I have been here before, and ended up skim coating the entire bathroom, after the wallpaper removal damaged the sheet rock, so I decided to go straight for sheet rock removal and replacement (“Hey, it’s a tiny room, resheet rocking will be easy, plus I can see where all the wires and plumbing run, to make other remodeling easier”) Well, and I found mold and punky sheet rock under the window, where it had obviously gotten wet repeatedly.
Then… I found that the sheet rock had been not only nailed to the studs, but glued on with mastic. The stuff looked like tar, but over 45 years had hardened to the consistency of obsidian. And in order to find that, I’d already punched holes in it. Time to call in the professionals.
The good news is, my bathroom has no more mold, improved insulation, and nice new flat sheet rock. Oh, and I know where all the wiring and plumbing is. 
As someone who used to hang wallpaper for a living, I strongly suggest you avoid stripping it if at all possible.
Hang over it or paint over it. But don’t strip!
We went thru this a few years ago.
1st room: Put on stripper and ran the holey-thing over it. Came off easy-peasy. Really big sheets. Barely had to do a second application anywhere.
2nd room: Put on stripper, etc. Nothing. The stuff wouldn’t come off in big pieces. Some scrapping ensued. Result: tearing off of some of the drywall paper.
What was the difference? The first room had primer on the walls. The second the wallpaper was put on bare drywall.
Lots and lots of effort ensued. Tried a steamer and all that. Then had to do some skim coating over the bad parts. Painted it this time. But still not a smooth enough finish, so new wallpaper over that. Actually looks nice.
3rd room: hired a pro. Took him a lot of effort, a lot of wall compound to smooth things out. Looks mostly okay but still not like a normally smooth wall after painting.
4th room: To heck with it. Thick paint. Multiple layers. Looks decent.
If you are ever in a position to put wallpaper on drywall: paint it first. Doesn’t have to look great, won’t take long, but saves a huge headache later.
Well, we’re lucky in the fact that we are buying from the original owner. She is a retired lady who had to move to assisted living and has her daughter selling off the estate.
I’m think that the daughter will be helpful in telling us what’s under the wallpaper (paint or bare sheet-rock).
I read some of your posts to Mrs. BD. She has had good and bad experiences with wallpaper so she’s approaching this with at least an understanding of the possibilities.
With good luck we may close next Friday and that will give us the weekend to test the walls in each room.
In case any lurkers are reading this and wondering why this is such an issue, it’s because drywall consists of three layers: paper, a thick layer of gypsum plaster, and paper on the other side. When you paste wallpaper directly to unprimed drywall it glues the wallpaper and the drywall paper layer together pretty permanently. If you try to take the wallpaper down and the drywall paper comes along with it, you’re screwed and that’s when you have to repair or replace the drywall.
Done.
Yes. We encountered this situation in a previous house. The drywall and the paper were as one. Removing it was impossible without destroying the drywall. We painted over it, and it was fine.
Other rooms sometimes strip relatively easily. But if you have the permanently bonded situation, you’re better off covering it.
The previous owners of our house put Contact paper on the kitchen walls. Z-brick, too. We knew when we bought the house that we were going to gut the kitchen anyway, so we ended up just tearing out the sheetrock.
They’d also, at one point, had 2 layers of Contact paper in the hall bathroom, but again, we removed the walls completely because the room was awful and we replaced everything, right down to the light switch. Had we not be young, ambitious DIYers, we wouldn’t have bought the house. It needed way too much work to drag it kicking and screaming out of the middle 70s.
As for real wallpaper, all they’d done was put up a bunch of rather tacky borders which came down fairly easily with a perforator and the thick goopy blue stuff. Good riddance to bad florals!
The in-laws house, even the ceilings were wallpapered. And in many rooms painted over the paper. Luckily we were just selling it and could let it be someone else’s issue to deal with. It hurt the value somewhat but we managed.
Our house came with some hideous wallpaper from the sixties in several rooms. We tried several products to remove it but the easiest was just to remove the and replace the sheetrock, then and paint over.
I went through 6 layers of paper (top one: huge, dark green, w/18" dusty/filthy roses).
It ain’t fun but can be entertaining (but only for the seriously disturbed).
Score, soak (vinegar?) for a few weeks. Remember - that crap has been up for decades - another couple of weeks will not seriously degrade the karma level of the universe.
And steam - forget the cute little machines. I got one at Goodwill to see if it will clean some old spray crap on patio door. I can’t believe anyone thought this 3# or plastic with a whole gallon capacity could do wall coverings.
The rental machine I used weight 40#, used lots of propane and still was a slow slog.
There should be units which can hook to a faucet and/or hose bib and produce continuous steam. Find one.
Why I posted: the first house I remember had old paper we removed. Under the bottom layer, we found the signature and date of the paper hanger.
Whoever removes the (ugly in THEIR eyes only) paper will find my name and a 1984 date.
After stripping paper, paint would be a huge letdown - a couple of sawhorses, a cheap slab door, roller and brush and hang your own.
None of my own, but someone I used to work with was wallpapering her bathroom, got up too quickly, and cracked her skull on the toilet. She actually got a pretty bad concussion and was out of work for a week. Her sympathetic co-workers took an old motorcycle helmet, glued on scraps of wallpaper, and presented her with a “wallpaper helmet” upon her return to the office.
I would install quarter inch drywall. It’s not expensive and you get a great surface to prime and paint. Home Depot sells it for $10.50 a sheet.
I knew somebody that tried painting wallpaper. Took several coats. The weight of the paint started pulling sections of wallpaper away from the wall. Not pretty.
My Victory:
Many years ago, as a poor young man, I was working at an equipment rental place. An older lady came it to rent a steamer to remove old, ugly wall paper. I helped her out, and she wasn’t sure she could do the job, so she hired me to do it and paid me very well! She also said she’d introduce me to her daughter, but I finished the job before that ever happened.
It wasn’t too difficult. Let the steam do the work for you.
For an even thinner cover:
1/8" Masonite, with rough side out. Fill rough side with wallboard compound (mud).
I had a kitchen wall (plaster and lath) so badly cracked it would have been easier to tear it out and hang sheetrock. To understand the enormity of that statement, try to rear out a tiny bit of plaster and lathe.
Masonite, mud, and wallpaper - the only way to tell is that the trim seems 1/8" thinner on that wall.
Bump for a final update.
We went after the demon wallpaper with a determination usually reserved for Armageddon battles. The wallpaper won.
Luckily we found a lady who does this stuff for a living. She was so fast and good that we hired her to paint the rooms that she de-wallpapered.
She was so good at painting those rooms that we hired her to paint more rooms.
Unfortunately her methods remains a mystery to us as she only worked during our work hours so observing her secrets wasn’t a possibility. I suspect some sort of sorcery which she fortunately used for only good purposes.
That’s one way to get the wallpaper off.
