Paint on wallpaper - what to do?

[Coffeefirstthing]

We moved to our house just before the first lockdown and I am now seriously fed up with our dated magnolia walls and would like to redecorate.

The problem is that whoever decided to paint everything magnolia some ~15 years ago didn't bother removing the old wallpaper first. When I say old wallpaper I mean it looks like it is decades old from the spots that are visible in a couple of places.

Is there any way I can make the walls looks better on a budget? The job situation is a bit dire at the moment so can't afford to get any professionals in or replaster it all, and also wouldn't want anyone in the house anyway as we are trying to stay safe.

Would higher quality paint make a difference? I can afford to spend a few hundred but not thousands.
Would like to at least get the living room sorted.

Or am I stuck with this until the pandemic is over and our finances are better again?

Chances are the walls won't be mirror smooth behind the paper so you would have to have it skimmed or fill sand and then use lining paper .

Paint isn't particular expensive about £40 full room ,I've used wilco and wicked own brand fine .
Just go over whats there till you can afford to do it properly

How much can you afford? Do you know how much replastering would cost? Is it every room?

Our house had hideous anaglypta and other textured wallpaper everywhere, including the ceilings, as well as several coats of paint and we couldn't afford to do it in one go so we save up and do a room at a time. We've taken everything back to brick in each room as we've got to it as there was a damn good reason people hadn't removed the paper. Blown, cheap plaster, holes, gravel mixed with cement and so on. It's been worth it to make it good but we are 4.5yrs in to living here and still have the snug, dining room, kitchen, stairs and a bedroom to go. Thankfully two of those rooms are wallpaper free. A plasterer costs us no more than £250 per room, often less and the improvement is stark. We've also uncovered all sorts of interesting stuff including original fireplaces, an original quarry tile floor and a secret room!

@rwalker thank you! I'm a DIY beginner so didn't even know about a lining paper but just googled it and it looks great and not that expensive either.

The surface is definitely not smooth and the magnolia paint job isn't great either, you can see the brush strokes clearly in places.

@showofhands thanks for your input. We have been reduced to single income so can't afford to spend much, so think ours will be a long-tern process whatever way we approach it.
Luckily the wallpaper isn't textured, but we have artex ceilings, but I will leave sorting them out for now. Luckily it's not the most offensive type!
Secret room sounds amazing, was it an actual room or more like storage?

Some paper comes off very easily within a scraper and perhaps some water or a steamer. As PP have said, it’s what’s behind the paper that can be a problem . But sometimes it’s just fine.

Are your walls lathe and plaster, plaster on bricks or plasterboard ?

Lining paper is a godsend for rough walls, remoce the old paper first, borrow a wallpaper steamer or score the paper with a stanley knife and use a bucket of soapy water and a sponge, soak the paper then start scraping it off, soak and scrape as you go.
Lining paper goes in different grades 800 thinnest to 2000 thickest so depending on how bad the walls are, if they're really bad use a thicker paper, remember there's always YouTube

Will steam or soapy water will work even with a layer of paint on top of the wallpaper?

The secret room isn't as exciting as it sounds. When they extended our house to put a kitchen on the back, they obviously couldn't quite work out what to do with the outdoor toilet so they just bricked it up, built round it, and left it there, hidden behind some of our units. It even still had its original wallpaper.

The reduction of income must be hard. I am sorry. Luckily, there is so much you can do to make things look good. In our last house we stripped everything (yes you can steam wallpaper with paint on but I would ventilate AND wear a mask as you do it) and replaced with lining paper as the walls weren't great but not awful. Don't buy the cheapest lining paper available as it sometimes makes things worse but get the right thickness and a little better than basic and you'll probably have a lovely surface to paint. We used Wilkos paint on our last place and it was absolutely fine and good value.

Sadly, our house is in quite a state so we've had to strip back to brick. Water ingress, crap work and bodge jobs left no choice. Hence having lived here 4 years and we've only done 4 rooms so far.

I'll find you a picture of what was under our crap textured wallpaper in one room!

We've also found actual holes in the ceiling into the attic, just covered up with paper, layer upon layer of vintage wallpaper and in one room, they'd put the paper on with PVA and overpainted it with gloss paint.

As we've pulled paper off, the plaster has just fallen away and crumbled in places.

(don't worry, it was very, very obvious when we bought it that under all the paper was a lot of damage and this stuff was all on the survey - we had to replace all the upstairs ceilings AND the roof before we did anything else)

@Coffeefirstthing

Will steam or soapy water will work even with a layer of paint on top of the wallpaper?

Yes it will work if the paint is emulsion ( water based ). If the paint is gloss ( unlikely but not unknown in older houses ) then you will neee to score it to break the surface of the paint and let the steam through to the wallpaper.

Don’t ask me how I know 🥺

I’d use this type of lining paper if necessary , it’s much thicker.

www.screwfix.com/p/erfurt-wallrock-fibreliner-wallpaper-white-1000mm-x-20m/1506P?tc=CA1&ds_kid=92700052136101623&ds_rl=1243321&ds_rl=1241687&ds_rl=1245250&ds_rl=1245250&gclid=Cj0KCQiAvP6ABhCjARIsAH37rbTWSKxFjhh8iYh8_0U_tQXQcY9VUaiw99Vdqu_ozsUaryBjrwy4x08aAhFnEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

We always score anyway to speed up the process a bit.

The gloss on wallpaper look is something I never want to rectify again.

paint (even emulsion) blocks the water. My tip is to use a large garden sprayer to repeatedly mist the walls, by the time you have worked all round the room, the first wall will be ready for the second spray.

start at the top and keep spraying as you scrape, it will run down behind the loose paper and get into seams

warm water and a bit of WUL

We've used this lining paper on a couple of occasions. It's nice and thick, easy to hang (you can paste the wall directly rather than paper itself), takes paint well. There's also a 1 metre wide version which may be a better option for larger rooms.

Oh, sorry, just noticed that @IM0GEN has already mentioned the same lining paper

Thank you everyone for your responses.
I typed a long reply a couple of days ago and lost it, so annoying when that happens!

This is what we are up against in the living room, the wallpaper underneath looks very old. And think the skirting boards used to be dark blue to match the pattern in the wallpaper. Would love to know what decade they are from, must have looked delightful when brand-new!

@Coffeefirstthing

This is what we are up against in the living room, the wallpaper underneath looks very old. And think the skirting boards used to be dark blue to match the pattern in the wallpaper. Would love to know what decade they are from, must have looked delightful when brand-new!

Changing Rooms has a lot to answer for! There was a real craze in the 90s/early 2000 for painting woodwork in a colour other than white. Also see borders, sponging, rag rolling stencils and walls divided in half with different wallpapers top & bottom with a wallpaper dado rail effect between the two. I suspect that your paper & woodwork is from that era.