Wallpaper stripping wiki - update proposal...

[Tim S]

Hi,

Been promising this for a while, but having stripped most of a house, I feel able to add something that hopefully will help others. If anyone would like to add or correct anything before I make this live, please feel free to suggest stuff, otherwise I'll whack it up.

Ignore the wiki-markup - I'll fix any errors here on upload.

Starting with the current Wiki, I'm proposing to update to this:

Cheers

Tim

===Steamer===

• Makes a wet mess [ed: I personally didn't find this an issue - do we want to keep this?]

• Can be very useful on stubborn cheap vinyls that don't peel dry and painted paper (especially ceiling paper).

• Fills the locality with a lot of water vapour - best done in spring or summer when windows can be opened, if possible.

===Wallwik sheets===

• Use your own sprayer with them

• Wallwik supplier]

• Possible (untested) replacement for wallwik sheets: lining paper

===Sprayer===

• Use warm [[water]] & [[detergent]]

• Less messy.

• The best sprayer for large areas of work, if you don't mind a bit of a mess, is a pump up garden sprayer - very quick and easy, especially on papered ceilings and paper on bare plaster, both of which can require a lot of water due to the absorbancy of the plaster.

• Don't forget to flush your garden sprayer out several times if you've used evil gardening chemicals in it previously.

• A fine mist spray makes less mess than a coarse spray, but whatever you do will make the floor wet. Best to lay plastic or turn the heating up and open some windows. # Spray a section # Wait 5-15 minutes (if paper is looking dryer rather than wetter then it's time to respray) # Respray the section # Wait 15 minutes The paper should come off easily.

===Vinyl paper=== The vinyl surface is waterproof, and the [[adhesive]] only comes away when wet. There are 2 ways to enable this to happen: # Peel off the top vinyl layer. Many, but not all papers are designed for this to be done. Likely to be a feature of the better quality papers. tart in a corner and pull gently, at at least 90 degrees and if possible, try to pull off parallel to the wall - if you're lucky, it will come off in one sheet. # If the previous attempt to peel fails, then you will need to scarify the vinyl layer to allow the penetration of water and/or steam. A bladed roller tool is available to do this in several formats. Without trying to plug any particular product brand, the type with 3 spikey rollers that you just push and drag around is a fast and efficient device. # Scarified paper may be fairly easily removed with steam. Steam the first corner (top or bottom) for a good minute, then carefully (it's hot!) try to pick up the corner of the vinyl. If you are very luck, it and the backing paper will start top lift as one. If not, hopefully, at least the (thin) vinyl will start to peel. Move the steam onto the next section and apply gentle pulling force onto the bit you lifted. With care, you should be able to keep peeling very slowly with the steamer staying in advance of the section you're peeling. If the paper is very low quality, or old, it may tend to tear or break. If this happens, try a stripping knife instead of a peeling action. # Any remaining backing paper is fairly easily dealt with. It can be steamed off in a second pass using a stripping knife, but this takes longer due to the paper absorbing the steam - it needs to actually become wet. A quicker, though messier approach is to follow the sprayer instructions above, or to sponge on hot water from a bucket. If the paper is sufficiently wetted in typically 2-3 passes, for at least 10-15 minutes, it may peel off in one piece, or it will yield fairly easily to a stipping knife. Wetter the better is the key to success.

===Painted non vinyl paper=== Typically this would be painted lining or textured paper (wall or ceiling). # Steam can work very well on this type of paper, depending on how many coats of emulsion there are. For one or two coats of emulsion, scarifying is not always necessary. If it's been painted many times or with gloss paint, scarifying may help, prior to the application of steam or copious hot water.

===Cleaning the walls afterwards=== Just when you thought stripping was the most boring messy tedious job in the world... Now you have to remove the glue residue. # Hot water - as hot as you can stand, and lots of it. A drop of Flash or similar does no harm. Good large rough and robust floorcloths too - lot's of 'em. A tea trolley helps, to keep the bucket at a convenient height for the upper parts of the walls and ceilings. # Paper over painted plaster: the glue should wash off fairly easily. Apply broad strokes with a very wet cloth to wet the glue. Do this over a good couple of yards of wall to give the water time to work. A second pass should see most of the glue coming off. # Paper over bare plaster: This can be harder as the plaster tends to hold the glue plaster well, and defeats the water by sucking it up. Based on various suggestions from uk.d-i-y USENET group, I found a sharp bladed long handled scraper helped (3" razor sharp blade, handle about 12" long). Wet about 1/2 square meter/yard with either the cloth or a sprayer. Have a quick coffee (10 minutes), then wet again, until it's almost dripping. Now push (or pull) the blade at a fairly shallow angle in a single pass. If you're lucky, 90% of the paste gunk will come off and pile up on the blade. Rinse the blade in the bucket of hot water and do the next 3" strip. This works best on good hard flat plaster. If the plaster is less even, and you find you are missing hollows, try 1/2 blade width passes with on overlap. After you've scraped a section about a yard wide and a foot or two deep, put the blade down and use the floorcloth to wash the remainder of the glue off. With any luck, if scraping was effective, this will need perhaps 3-4 passes, with a fair bit of rubbing on one or two. If you run your finger over the wet surface you will feel if it's slimy or not. Not slimy is perfect - no glue left. Very slimy and you need to wash more. Slightly slimy - you need to decide if it's good enough. If you are going to paper again, a little past is unlikely to matter. But if your are painting, it would be best to remove as much glue as reasonably practical.

==See Also==

• [[Special:Allpages|Wiki Contents]]

• [[Special:Categories|Wiki Subject Categories]]

[[Category:Decorating]]

[Tim S]

Tim S coughed up some electrons that declared:

BTW - don;t worry about silly typos and spelling - I'll stick it though a spell checker - bit tired but wanted to get it going...

[brass monkey]

It also needs a section on wood-chip, !"£$%£"% stuff.

[Tim S]

brass monkey coughed up some electrons that declared:

I haven't (thankfully) had the pleasure.

Do you have any tips - I'm happy to write them in?

Or shall I just put it in a section under "Angle grinder"...

Cheers

Tim

[brass monkey]

Angle grinder covers it, it's been half-stripped for months :(

[meow2222]

Great job. I'll ask a couple of qs re some of the smaller details...

I can see it being an issue in some situations, such as around wiring. It may seem dumb but people do do things without thinking them through, so the brief caution can be handy. In fact adding a short section on electrical safety when stripping might be useful.

Just one question here. Have you really tried every possible sprayer type, including eg hvlp paint sprayers, vacuum cleaner sprayers? If not it might be best to say 'good' rather than 'best'

should one use such a sprayer at all? I've always been taught one shouldn't, in horticulture a separate sprayer is always used for the toxic stuff.

Are you sure? Youre only going to put more glue on in most cases.

A fine job

NT

[John Rumm]

It hold no fear for me!

As long as you have the one vital tool - a proper *sharp* scraper:

even painted wood chip comes off easily enough. Either scrape off in one hit, or more likely, scrape once which scars the surface (the wood chips make it easy for the scraper to slice lumps off). The wet and wait, finally the rest comes off much like ordinary paper.

[Tim S]

[e-mail] coughed up some electrons that declared:

Good point. I did some stripping around my temporary CU, and right up to lights and sockets - I was careful, so you're right, deserved a mention.

OK - "good" it is.

I'll change it to a reminder, something like: "Caution: have you used the sprayer for evil chemicals that you don't want to be breathing?" or something along those lines. Leave it to the user to decide how to handle it.

I've sprayed weedkiller with mine, washed it several times with hot water and haven't died yet - but it's not really this Wiki's job to advise on that.

Fair point. I'm stuck in the "my POV" syndrome - I'm painting mine. Could preface it with: "If you need to clean the glue off, eg because you plan to paint".

Thanks for the advice.

Cheers

Tim

[Tim S]

John Rumm coughed up some electrons that declared:

's what I used for glue removal.

Can I incorporate that, John?

Cheers

Tim

[The Medway Handyman]

6" one is a thing of great beauty.... you could take stripes off zebras with one.

[Dave Liquorice]

IMHO makes a much less wet mess than traditional soaking. Steam stripped paper is damp when it comes off but has far less moisture in it than soaked, I find by the time you have gone round a room (faster than the trad. method) the first strippings are almost dry. Because of this don't leave little bits where you don't want 'em or they'll restick themselves.

Yes the room does become very humid so open windows open a little are useful.

Agreed, particulary if using the soak method with water running down the walls.

[fred]

In article , Dave Liquorice writes

Agreed, I wouldn't use anything but a steam stripper when removing wallpaper. I've found it to be the fastest and least tiring method of all that I've tried.

I'm happy to keep the room a bit steamy to start it working on the rest of the room. As you say, any excess can be relieved by opening windows whatever the season.

[Chris J Dixon]

I can certainly recommend a steamer and scarifier for painted woodchip, but even then it was necessary to rub down afterwards to get rid of all the particles.

One further caution is to keep the steamer on the move. The longer it lingers, the greater the chance of the plaster blowing.

Chris

[Andrew Gabriel]

It's missing the technique I have mentioned a few times here, after discovering by accident.

Wet the paper and leave to soak through. I do this with the steamer, without making any attempt to pull the paper off. Leave for at least an hour. (When I first discovered this, I had actually left it for over 12 hours, but subsequent practice shows that length of time isn't necessary unless the paper has been heavily painted.)

Then go over with the steam stripper again, starting with the corners of each sheet. The steam will cause the moisture in the paper to boil, and blow the paper off the wall. Normally each sheet comes off effortlessly as one whole clean sheet, which even look reusable, although I never have!

If you have a second person, they should follow along behind you cleaning the residual glue off, which is very easy just after the paper has been removed, but becomes more difficult if it gets a chance to dry again. I use warm sugar soap.

You could try using a water spray, wet sponge or other method for initially wetting the paper. I don't know if it would do so as well as the steam does.

Another tip -- don't score the paper unless/until you've found that you really can't get water to penetrate it without doing so, and that includes leaving it a day to do so. If you do end up scoring it, that makes it much less likely to come away in full sheets, so removal becomes more fiddly, and you can find afterwards that you've damage the plaster behind.

[Tim S]

Chris J Dixon coughed up some electrons that declared:

Excellent - I'll add it all in for tonight's edit :)

Where I'll also attempt to spell and punctuate correctly(!)

Not exactly an exciting Wiki topic - so I'm very pleased with all the suggestions. Thanks!

Cheers

Tim

[Tim S]

Andrew Gabriel coughed up some electrons that declared:

And excellent suggestion. I'll include that.

Yes, I noticed that too.

Cheers

Tim

[Cicero]

=========================================

When stripping walls (as opposed to ceilings) I start at the top with a sprayer going around the whole room or a single long wall. I then strip as much as possible at the top of the wall leaving ragged edges to the remaining paper. Next, I go around again spraying just above the ragged edges and the effect of this is that the water running down tends to run behind the still attached paper causing less run-off onto the floor and softening the paper as it runs down between paper and plaster.

Cic.

[Andrew Gabriel]

That reminds me -- the steam is likely to set off any nearby smoke detectors. For detectors which are part of a fire alarm system, I find that a disposable latex rubber glove slips over perfectly, and the "hand" dangling from the ceiling is a really obvious reminder that you've disabled the alarm, and you must never leave it in this state if you leave the area. For home smoke detectors, they're mostly too big for a glove, so you can try wrapping and taping a plastic freezer bag round it, although getting a good enough seal on them is not easy; I've had then still go off sometimes. Again, never leave the bag on when you leave the immediate area, and definitely not overnight. You are probably at increased risk of fire whilst decorating is going on.

[Mark]

I've had success with an ordinary scraper and steamer to remove painted woodchip (spit) paper. Using a scarifying tool first helps.

[Tim S]

Cicero coughed up some electrons that declared:

Good tip. I'll mention it, as my method made the floor into a pond.

Cheers

Tim