My son accidentally put his foot through the bathroom ceiling while he was up in the attic. I didnt think it would be such a big job until I got started. I realized I would have to remove the wallpaper but this was going to happen soon anyway. What I didnt know was how difficult it would be. I tried enzyme strippers and steam and wrestled with it for 2 days. I couldnt find anything that would take off this wall paper so I just took down the sheetrock and edid it. What could make removing wallpapare so difficult? My wife and I decided someone put it up with carpenters glue.
I steamed mine off, wiped the wall down, then used an oil base primer, followed by an eggshell finish.
The oil base will take care of any residue left behind that you couldnt get. At least thats what my local paint shop told me to do it worked fine, and you can never tell wall paper was even there.
Get "WP Chomp". Peel off the first "layer" of wallpaper, then brush/roll that stuff on, wait about 2 minutes & peel the sheet off. Don't let it dry in place otherwise you'll have to redo the procedure.
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This stuff also works on peeling up lineoleum put down on plywood....
I hear you - we're in a similar situation in my house. We've become experts at techniques for painting over wallpaper, because our repeated attempts at getting the paper down have only made things worse. We've got stuff up that's probably original to the 1923 construction. I've never seen wallpaper like this; we take off the first four or five layers and the last one is always this stuff that's like 1/8" thick and comes off in chunks, usually taking some of the plaster with it. Anything we use that's strong enough to dissolve the glue does the same to the wall behind it. It looks worse to remove it than it does to just sand and spackle over the seams, prime and paint.
I actually wish I had sheetrock walls sometimes so I could just rip them all down and rebuild them - it would be easier than trying to remove this 85 year old wallpaper from plaster.
??? I had the same thing in my 200-year-old house, and most of the walls are plaster, not drywall. All you have to do is spray with water, wait 2 minutes, then scrap off however many layers were soaked. If that didn't take you down to the plaster, repeat the procedure until it does. Takes about 8 hours for two people to remove many layers of wallpaper in an average sized room. With just a single layer of wallpaper, one person can remove it all in about 4 hours. If you've got fabric wallpaper (more rag/cotton than paper) it works better to just peel it/lift it after spraying the water rather than trying to scrap it, but it still comes off very fast. I just don't get why people try steaming and scoring and all that ridiculous stuff. However, if you've made the mistake of painting over it, you've got a real mess on your hands. It's very difficult to remove the paper once you've painted. You do realize you'll never sell your house once you've painted over wallpaper, right?
Nope. Try 2 months of trying everything multiple times. What kind of idiot do you think I am? We tried water, steam, ZIF, everything else. The only way to get the bottom layer of paper off was to take large pieces of the wall with it.
I realize I *will* sell my house with painted over wallpaper, because a) nobody can tell the difference and it looks much, much better than the wallpaper that we painted over, b) the house already had painted- over wallpaper in some rooms when we bought it (and there were three other offers on the table), and c) *every* house in this area has painted-over wallpaper somewhere, and most of it wasn't done right at all, so it's really obvious. This is not a historic house or a historic area, but it does have a lot of old houses full of DIY redecorators. Believe me, I'm basing this on our house-hunting experience.
You *do* realize it's not that big of a deal to just re-plaster a wall, right? Takes 2 people about 8 hours to do a room :)
We've done that in one room and would do it in more if need be. But man, seriously - you cannot tell the difference - we only did that one room because of settling cracks that we wanted to hide. There's really no need to re-plaster anywhere else.
Some people get stuck on thinking there's only one right way to do things. If you've got wallpaper stuck on so hard that you can't get it off without damaging the wall, it *will* look better to just paint over it. Pull off what you can, sand the hell out of it, spackle the seams and the edges, sand the hell out of it again, prime, sand some more, then paint. Looks like a new wall. Much better than a wall with a bunch of pockmarks in it from trying to dig stubborn wallpaper out.
My first house had painted over wallpaper. I had to scrape the whole room with a dinner fork to get the steamer to work on the paper over plaster. I tried steaming an attic room with painted wallpaper over wallboard, and had to re-wallboard it due to the wallboard sagging between the studs/joists.
Well I got all the drywall replaced today and ready to prime and paint. Glad I did it this way. I was able to update the electrical in the room adding better lighting, a second outlet for my side of the lav and staighten a wavy wall. It took about an hour to tear out the walls and about four more to replace the drywall and do framing and electrical changes. I put wife and son busy cleaning up the mess. I was afraid that where the ceiling met the wall would crack if I just repired the ceiling but this is a good as,better than, new. One thing I am not looking forward to doing is having the popcorn ceiling blown but its either replace it here or tear it out of the rest of the house,I'm tempted . I did get a good deal from a guy who I know does good work, He will blow it for $90 if I have it masked off and primed for him.
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