Removing Wallpaper - Mesquite,TX

My sister has done this in two houses that she's restored and she says to rent a steamer if you have the money to do so. If not get a scorer at a home store and score the old wallpaper then using a spray bottle with HOT water spray the wallpaper where its been scored. Wait a few minutes and pull away what will come. Repeat as is necessary. Be cautioned - if you score too often you can leave marks on the wall that you will need to sand before painting. However, you will likely be doing some sanding and etc to prep the wall for paint anyway. Whatever you do - enjoy the process!

Suzi

We have lived in our home for 28 years and have removed wallpaper over the years. A wallpaper man once told me to put warm water in a spray bottle with a little ivory soap. I spray the area I'm working with well and let sit 3-4 minutes and then peel it off. Some areas will need more water some not. You can tell once you start. I have always had great success with this and not peeling and such. Key is to get wet enough and it will peel off.

Have you tried surfing the internet for ideas?

The EASIEST way to do it is to rent a wallpaper remover from Home Depot.

The CHEAPEST way to do it is to get a wallpaper scorer, spray your section with wallpaper remover, and use a spatula to scrape it off.

Good luck. I HATE removing wallpaper!

Don't remove the wall paper at all. Leave it up. Think about it, sheetrock has a layer of paper that covers it from the factory to stabilize it. Once wall paper has been glued with adhesive, paper sticks to paper very well, why remove it if it is stuck to your sheetrock very well. Two layers or more of paper is stronger than one, right?

By all means don't use a scorer. Think about it, by perforating wholes in the surface to let in moisture to loosen paper, you are putting hundreds of tiny wholes in the paper layers. The first layer will come off fairly easy, although the second paper sack layer will now come off in hundreds of tiny strips creating the worse mess ever....bad idea!!

As an interior finish contractor I have perfected a simple method as follows.
1. Cut away any loose or unstable paper including loose seams.
2. I use a sealer to cover the wallpapered walls. Once dry the paper's surface is now a hard surface.
3. Float a thin layer of mud/joint compound over then seams & where loose paper has been cut away to a smooth consistency. Now your walls are ready to add any texture you prefer.

Why in the world would anyone want to go through all those extra steps to remove wall paper with a steam machine, or soaps, chemicals, etc, etc.? Pretty much with all those methods your are either applying moisture to the paper & gypsum, making it a longer, harder, & messy process, many times gauging the walls and making the process worse.

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There is some wallpaper remover stuff at the stores. It's in a spray bottle like windex. You just spray the wallpaper and we sprayed a little extra around the seams and such and let it set and the it just peels off. Real easy and no big mess. Hope it helps and good luck!

We bought an older home two years ago and took off the wallpaper (which had been up since about 1980) by scoring it and wetting it down with 1/2 FABRIC SOFTENER and 1/2 Hot water sprayed from a bug sprayer. It worked great. I had already tried the spray-on remover from Home Depot and the scraper with no luck.

I have tried to remove wallpaper several different times in my older homes with very poor results. I have tried each of the methods listed here and all are time consuming, messy and leave you with a wet, scarred wall that will need to be textured. If the wallpaper is attached directly to the sheet rock as it was in my house, then it is very difficult to remove without damaging the sheet rock. Even where I had peeling wallpaper that I thought would come down with very little effort - it was a pain.

Two things that I have done that work - one is to just paint over it and do a sponging technique to give it a look of texture. The other it to spray or apply real texture over it, then paint. The best method depends on your budget and the condition of the wallpaper. When I was renting a house many years ago and had very little budget, I just painted a coat of Kilz, then painted over the paper. The wallpaper was in good condition, just ugly. I then did a simple sponging technique to give it the appearance of texture. It looked great and lasted for as long I lived there (several years.)

I have also done real texture with mudd, directly over the treated wallpaper. I did a spatula texture that is popular right now. This was only in a bathroom, but was a lot more work than I expected. It looks great, but very difficult to do. Recently, I hired a painter to come and just spray texture over all of the last of my existing wallpaper. He was so inexpensive that I ended up having him re-texture some of my painted walls that were in bad shape. Then I paid him to do the painting. It gave my whole home a new and fresh look.

I am not sure where you live, but there is usually a large number of private contractors that do this kind of work and if you shop around, then you can probably have it done very reasonably. I think I paid about $100-$150 for one large wall (not sure exactly, since I did most of the house). If you have a limited budget, then you could do the painting yourself. I don't remember how much it cost to rent a steamer, or the various chemicals and tools to remove the wallpaper yourself, but believe me - when you add it up and include your time, it would probably be over $100 - with a less professional look. Hope that helps.