Hi, all. Someone asked that I post a follow-up on this topic so here it be.
Early Sat. a.m. we got down to business. DH had his bucket, hot water and a little vinegar plus a couple of terry cloth towels and started in the living room. I filled my bucket with warm water and a little squirt of dish detergent and started upstairs in the hallway. One scrubbing removed some of the glue but not all, so I grabbed a scraper thingie and used that to get more of the glue, and then scrubbed again, working in 3 foot square sections. Two hours later,. DH declared he had finished both the LR and DR and what was taking me so long as I was still in the hallway and steps. Then I came down to see what his walls looked like. Eeek! He had used old dark green hand towels from the rag pile and there were bits of dark green terry cloth specks over all the walls. And the glue was still quite apparent, and some spots of the wallpaper liner were still there! DH then left for an appt with his eye doctor and I got to work on his share of the walls. Long story short, by 6 p.m. Sat. all the walls were just about clean of glue. Sunday afternoon when the rooms were sunny I could see where we had missed and tackled those areas. The painter arrived this morning at
8:00 a.m., approved the walls and went to MAB to pick up all the paint. By 10 a.m. he had finished the first coat on all the ceilings and one of the walls, but then left for the day because of an impending blizzard (wimp!). So here we sit...12 inches of snow predicted overnight and hoping that the roads are clear bright and early tomorrow so the work can proceed.So what did I learn? (a) A little dish soap and the assistance of a paint scraper works better than hot water and vinegar; (b) Never use a ratty dark-colored towel to remove wallpaper paste; (c) using sizing on the walls before wallpapering makes the paper easier to strip off, but extra effort is needed to remove all that extra glue (although I'd rather scrub walls than strip wallpaper any day!); (d) don't tackle home renovations during the winter (at least not in the Philadelphia area!)
Thanks again for the advice. It made the job somewhat easier.
Liz