I have two bathrooms with wallpaper and my little steamer works but it's going to take forever. I know there are chemicals you can put on the paper to get it off. Does anyone have any suggestions for the best one, or is there another method? We have one of those scoring things. Thanks for any help.
Dawn
I fyou have plenty of time, just keep wetting it with water and keep it soaking wet. After a few days it will practically fall off. It's a messy process.
DIF by Zinsser is a gel that really works well. Let it really soak in, then paper comes off clean with a putty knife or scraper
Zinssers scoring tool (round with red top) is an excellent tool also. The more scoring the better, for the gel to really soak in.
--reed
Sawzall
We used a garden hose adapted to an old oil burner nozzle. It makes a fine spray of water. Spray the wall, wait, then spray it again. The paper will come off easily. I imagine a regular tree sprayer would work.
Al
We did our kitchen and it took forever, every square inch of wall paper seemed glued to the wall and we'd lose drywall if we steamed it too much. We also used a chemical (DIF?) without success. Heck, we had rented a large steamer before we bought one since the project was going to take longer than a day, the larger steamer didn't do much better and it was much harder to handle due to its size and power (metal pieces get rather hot).
We just now got to our bathroom and the wallpaper literally falls off in large chunks with our little plastic steamer. In this case, a criss-cross diagonal pattern made with a box cutter tool resulted in a fairly clean and relatively painless task.
Now removing the giant mirrors that are glued onto the wall is another story. :)
-- gorf
Ditto to Reed's post
DIF & the "paper tiger" makes removing wallpaper fun & satisfying in wierd sort of way :)
cheers Bob
I used a two step method. First I peeled the vinyl off the paper backing. Then I just wet the paper with warm water with a sponge. After keeping it wet when it absorbed the water it just peeled off in about 30 minutes. Then I wiped the walls down with a wet sponge to remove any paste. No additives were used. I think I was lucky after reading some of the horror stories about removing wallpaper. So give my method a try . There is nothing to lose.
Others have given good methods. My opinion on wall paper is:
Once a room is wallpapered you are stuck with wallpaper.
If you want to go back to painted walls, hire a professional as the job of cleaning off the paste residue will try the patience of Job.
Wife now has finally gotten it clear that if she ever puts up one more piece of paper it is the end.
Harry K
Not when it was put on an unpainted, unprimed wall with no sizing. :-(
No, you are never stuck (was that a pun?) with wallpaper.
I had fugly wallpaper on top of raw plasterboard and I was able to remove most of the wallpaper with minimal negative side effects.
I first lightly abraded the wallpaper so that the DIF solution could work its way in through the wallpaper surface. I used the hottest water I could manage using thick rubber gloves. The secret to not ruining the raw plasterboard is use the absolute minimum amount of water necessary to loosen the wallpaper and wait for the DIF to do its job. On my first attempt, I used way too much water and I had to replaster large sections of the wall where the plasterboard washed off. Not a fun job.
My wife was very pleased with the job (especially since I've never done this type of work before) and I got lucky that night.
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