painting over wallpaper? Possible/advisable?

[mumofsatan]

Total DIY virgin here so please be gentle with me.
Property I'm buying has (awful) wallpaper in several rooms. Its that woodchippy type style. One wall is badly damaged and will need stripping which I imagine will be a nightmare task and I'm then planning on wallpapering that wall. I've found some really nice wallpaper which I think would work quite well with the old (plain cream) paper and wondered whether I could just paint over the existing paper so I'd only have to strip and re-paper one wall.

New paper is for a'feature' wall effect and the background is very similar to existing if that makes sense and the coloured pattern in it would match very well with bedding, curtains etc.

Hope that makes sense?

Generally it is quite easy to paint woodchip wall paper. As long it is still stuck to the wall reasonably well, it should be fine. Stick down any loose edges/corners before you start. And don't worry if when you do paint it, the paper looks as if it is coming off the wall - when it gets wet it stretches and as it dries out again it should shrink back flat to the wall. You will prabably need a couple of coats of paint to make sure all the little bumps/cracks caused by the wood chips are covered. Good Luck!

Thanks for that seeline. It seems to be stuck on VERY well, hence my reluctance to even attempt to remove the bits that seem ok.

Fingers crossed. Am rubbish at DIY

Just been to Homebase and bought my wallpaper and also got a sample of a similar one to on wall to test on. Watch this space..

Woodchip paper is usually designed to be painted over - so yours probably already is. It is used, as is anaglypta paper, to disguise the atrociousness of the plastering behind it. Removing it can be "interesting". It also bloody hurts - they're not kidding about the woodchips and if you get those up your fingernails you know about it!

If you want to re-paper it and then paint, you can buy lining paper - it's plain paper and is again designed to have other stuff over it, either a thinner wallpaper or paint.

If the wall you are stripping has been painted, you will need to score the paper to allow the water to go through to the paste side. Beware though - if you get it too wet you might find the plaster comes away too (as I said, the plaster underneath is usually not in great condition). If you can get away without a steam stripper, do - because that is more likely to loosen old poor plastering.

Echoing what the others say -- if it's been woodchipped, it's probably because the surface underneath is dodgy and the very act of stripping the woodchip would be likely to make it worse. We just ended up getting our new house plaster skimmed throughout because we knew we wanted paint rather than paper, and what we found under all the paper was not pretty (previous owner had lived there since 1945 and papered approximately annually, it would seem...).

So if you don't want to find yourself with a plastering situation, and you know you want to paint it, either just paint over the woodchip (as Thumbwitch says, it's designed for that), or if you want to strip the woodchip you should expect to have to put lining paper up, maybe fill bigger holes first. If you do have any spare cash, and you're going to live there a long time and like the look of pristine painted walls, then you could consider taking the woodchip off and getting the plaster skimmed. But it's not worth it if you're going to paper over it, imo.

thanks for all this advice. I have (somewhere) a steam stripper that DS and I attempted to use a few years ago so will have a go with that on the one wall and then paint over the others. On a bit of a budget on the bedroom and living room walls as having to get kitchen and bathroom done as a priority so need to do other rooms as cheaply as possible.

My problem is (well one of them) that I start out with all good intentions (hence the partially painted kitchen which I have this morning bought paint to finish) but I give up too easily.
Am feeling very positive about this now