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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To absolutely detest wallpaper, in fact it should be fecking banned

91 replies

ApocalypseCheeseToastie · 26/07/2011 22:04

I can't bloody stand the stuff, who on earth came up with the idea ? Who ?

Who saw a perfectly good house with nice walls and thought to themselves, I know what i'll do, i'll giftwrap it ?

A twat, that's who.

Because the problem with wallpaper is it has to be scaraped off to be replaced, EVERY LITTLE PIECE

In stupidly high places.

I mean what is the sodding point in hanging wallpaper 30foot in the air ? PAINT the fucking thing you fools, it's easier.

I hope you appreciate this thread btw, it was posted with blistered hands from a wilted cheese who has spent the day scraping walls in preperation for new blissful, cglorious plaster. Which will then be painted with relish.

If i'm not around tomorrow it's because I snapped my neck trying to get the wallpaper off the fucking ceiling in above the landing with a huge drop that some sadistic twat hung 20 or so years ago

OP posts:

salempickles · 27/07/2011 08:53

I would personally love to meet the person who invented woodchip and artex and strangle them both. Having just bought an older house i have had to strip it all back, you can imagine my delight at spending an hour stripping woodchip of a ceiling only to find another layer of woodchip, 1 is bad enough but who thinks "my level of thickness is not enough, i know ill put on another layer to build it up".

Then we move into the hall where it was covered in artex resembling the inside of a cave and painted in dayglo yellow (i would add pics to shock you all but dont know how).

Finally we came to the kitchen, cork super glued to the floor with wood paneling all around, and i mean all around, even the cupboard doors has paneling strips glued onto them (for what purpose i don't know).

StrandedBear · 27/07/2011 08:59

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

BuckBuckMcFate · 27/07/2011 09:04

I love stroking newly plastered walls mmmmm

tethersend · 27/07/2011 09:12

I have bought loads of 1970s wallpaper on eBay and am putting it up all over the house.

Ha HA!

Becaroooo · 27/07/2011 09:22

Ah. Artex.

In this house (which we are moving from soon) the previous owner thought he was good at DIY...he put his own artex on.

I will leave you to imagine what horrors I have had to live with. Cottage cheese ceilings anyone???

This was also the man who put a new patio door in and didnt fill in the floor underneath it When we decorated and refloored that room some years ago we got a lovely surprise when we took the carpet up....gaping hole in the floor!!!

I totally agree wrt wallpaper. Its satans gift wrap.

DamselInDisarray · 27/07/2011 09:39

You can't always skim over artex easily. Sometimes the hideous swirls as so thick and deeply textured that your room would shrink considerably if you tried to plaster it all flat. The difference between the peaks and troughs on the hideous artex in my mum's living room walls was about 3".

One of my friends at school's parents had artex on ever single wall and ceiling in their house. Different patterns in every room. It was awful.

Georgimama · 27/07/2011 09:40

Arf at "satan's giftwrap".

Chandon · 27/07/2011 09:41

When we moved in our new house it had mustard yellow wallpaper.

We just painted over it and it is fine. It looked bubbly when paint was wet, but dried perfectly.

Should I have scraped it off first? why?

CogitoErgoSometimes · 27/07/2011 09:42

YABU.... There is nothing to beat the satisfaction of applying a steam wallpaper stripper to a wall and then, shortly afterwards, removing great fronds of the stuff with your scraper. The DIY equivalent to peeling off sunburned skin....

Georgimama · 27/07/2011 09:46

Chandon if the paper is flat, not sheeny and still v firmly anchored to the wall it is fine to paint it, you are in effect using it as lining paper. We did the same in DS's bedroom and it is fine.

rainbowtoenails · 27/07/2011 10:11

So is plastering over an artexed (13ft) ceiling a doable diy job?

maighdlin · 27/07/2011 11:58

i love wallpaper and wallpapering. looks much better than plain paint really lifts a room. and the sense of accomplishment when your done cannot be beaten as you admire your perfectly straight patterned match wallpaper.

emptyshell · 27/07/2011 12:21

You want a hellish prospect worse than stripping woodchip or removing wallpaper from ceilings?

We have woodchip wallpaper on the ceilings, not to mention it's only half the ceiling because we stripped out the hideous fitted cupboards when we moved in. I'm proud to admit that because my motivation had reached rock bottom by that point, we just painted it all pure brilliant white and are living with half a wallpapered ceiling and fuck it. I'm not stripping that shite off - I'll wait till I win the lottery and hide the decorator over the road to do it.

Have to tackle the woodchip in the spare room at some point - it had some hideous school toilet esque wallmounted mirror on it which we removed - so not only is it woodchip (and knackered plaster in one place where the shower tray had leaked through) but it's got this dayglo yellow patch on the wall where the mirror was and the rest of it's faded. Bollocks - I'll redecorate that room if I ever get pregnant (unlikely).

Yep our house now sounds like an utter picturesque shithole.

I can understand hte need for wallpaper though - although I think this bold feature wall thing will look dated as hell in years to come and we'll all wet ourselves laughing when we uncover today's wallpaper fashions in years to come like we do with the 1970s stuff now.

limitedperiodonly · 27/07/2011 12:27

My dad papered the hallway ceiling a few times - over the stairs, really high. He must have been a human fly.

He never complained. It's what dads did in the '70s along with stacking roof racks and pitching proper tents with pegs and guy ropes.

WhollyGhost · 27/07/2011 12:40

but why, why, why

would so many people go to so much trouble for so little benefit?

Was it a source of macho pride down the pub?

"I just finished another layer of woodchip on the ceiling over the stairs, looks lovely and bumpy. I managed it by fashioning my own stilts"

"That's nothing, I just added another layer of artex to the ceilings and walls...I had to use a jet pack to get up there"

tethersend · 27/07/2011 13:25

You'll all be kicking ourselves next year when Artex is IN.

Scheherezadea · 27/07/2011 13:27

Wallpaper is good for keeping the house warm - especially for those of us who live in old houses, rather than modern brand new estate houses.

Saying that, my house is 600 years old, and we don't have any wallpaper, it's all lime plaster or whatever it's called

CogitoErgoSometimes · 27/07/2011 13:28

Anyone mentioned textured Anaglypta yet? Whoever buys my parents' house when they finally leave will be cursing the day that stuff was invented. It's everywhere and covered in 25 years' worth of Brilliant White vinyl emulsion.

mathanxiety · 27/07/2011 16:50

CheerfulYank -- those borders

I think borders were the ultimate design statement back in the late 80s. I remember a lot of goose themed decor when we were househunting in the early 90s. The geese wore ribbons and there were baskets, hearts, check fabric -- I think it was supposed to signify 'country' life, simplicity, coziness.

The house we eventually bought had cheap wood paneling attached with black tarry glue to the plaster underneath in one room downstairs (where they had also installed a hideous dropped ceiling and overhead fluorescent light fixture) and all over the upstairs. It bulged where they hadn't measured the height properly. That glue was engineered to survive a nuclear holocaust. We ended up painting over the wallpaper in the living room. If you stared at it for a while it had a hologram effect that would freak you out. A base of oil primer and two topcoats did the trick.

My parents put up woodchip paper in one room and it's still there, with possibly 40 coats of magnolia / shades of porridge all over it at this point. I don't envy the task of whoever ends up trying to strip it off.

emptyshell · 27/07/2011 18:18

I've decided our woodchip is load-bearing woodchip and the house will prob fall down without it.

nojustificationneeded · 27/07/2011 18:26

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

alowVera · 27/07/2011 18:28

I have 1 feature wall in my house wallpapered. I put a different one up every 5-6 months. 6 sheets, each sheets peal off in one go. Takes less than an hour to take down old stuff and put up new. The paste the wall stuff is the best to get off. And doesn't bubble.

Can't stand the stuff that you can't get off. Steam is good to get it off.

Zwitterion · 27/07/2011 18:30

When we moved into our house there was a chimney breast in the kitchen covered in brick effect wallpaper.

We stripped it back to discover not one but two more layers of brick effect wallpaper.

Peeled back the final layer to find a chimney breast, made of brick.

MissBetsyTrotwood · 27/07/2011 18:55

Ha ha. Dark blue woodchip covered our place when we moved in. It was horrible but it did cover a multitude of sins. Or so we found out when we stripped it (actually paid someone else to.)

In the 80s my parents covered every room in Laura Ashley's finest. Lots of roses and sweet peas. It's probably cool again now.

PassTheTwiglets · 27/07/2011 19:24

We don't have wallpaper (just lined and painted walls) but I'm going to have it when we decorate. domesticsluttery.com have some fabulous ones - they do Waallpaper Wednesday each week. I love these one but would probably never use them:

Colour your own wallpaper

All beyond fabulous but the sort of thing you are bound to get fed up with after 6 months. Still tempted to go for one of those in the downstairs loo, where it doesn't really count :)

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