Rough cost of removing wallpaper and replastering

[pegasussy]

Has anyone recently had wallpaper stripped off the walls, and then had the walls plastered and made ready for painting?

I'm trying to assess what the cost is likely to be for a medium-sized room, and then whole house. Thank you!

Following, as want same.

My new living room has paper with some sort of glitter to it

Sigh, sympathies. Why paper walls. They always pucker. I had a room stripped and plastered ages ago but just cannot find a record of the cost.

Would you consider stripping the wallpaper yourself? It's very easy (but messy!), especially if you hire a steamer. Assuming your walls are in decent nick and just need skimming rather than full replastering, I'd expect a medium sized room to be a couple of days' work just for the plastering work, not the stripping. My local plasterer charges £200 a day, but I think 170-200 is a decent ballpark.

We’ve just had a decent sized room plastered for £250 but we stripped ourselves as it was so much cheaper!

In my experience plasterers will expect you to strip the walls first.
So you'd need a decorator if you wanted the walls stripped. Even then, I'm not sure they'd all strip wallpaper?
It's a pig of a job but easy enough if you can.

@Howtotameyourtoddler

Would you consider stripping the wallpaper yourself? It's very easy (but messy!), especially if you hire a steamer. Assuming your walls are in decent nick and just need skimming rather than full replastering, I'd expect a medium sized room to be a couple of days' work just for the plastering work, not the stripping. My local plasterer charges £200 a day, but I think 170-200 is a decent ballpark.

Go easy on the steaming until you are sure the plaster can take it, though. Some plaster can't.

Last year I paid about £550 for a 4m x 5m (ish) room to have lathe and plaster taken off 2 walls, reboarded and skimmed, one large wall (chimney breast and 2 alcoves) to be skimmed and also the area under the bay window to be skimmed. Took about 3.5 days. Room was stripped of wallpaper and sugar soaped to give a clean, glue free surface (by me). He was a lovely chap and we started seeing each other (both single!) 14 months on I've had a hallway, landing, staircase, ceilings and bedroom plastered for free... I feel like I've won the lottery - he knows the way to my heart 😂

£700 for 2 rooms, plastering only 16ft x 9ft, the other room 12ft x14ft, I removed the paper myself.
Average cost for a room to be skimmed is around £450 (that includes ceilings).

Plastered don't tend to strip the wallpaper

Do it yourself. It's not hard.

Honestly, 1000s to do a whole house. We've recently moved into an.80s homage with textured peach wallpaper in every room. It's hideous. But we've resigned ourselves to having to strip and sand it all ourselves over a long period of time as we simply can't afford to pay what anyone has quoted us. (Three quotes all between £300-400 to prepare a room for painting... And that's not a replaster and under the assumption that we'd strip the wallpaper ourselves first anyway!)

OP. - where in the country do you live, how big is the room, & how old is the house/what condition are the walls in?

I had this dine recently: £200 for room to be stripped, £1300 (!!) for the plastering on a good size living room ((12 x 15 feet). There were a couple of arches, & this included the ceiling too. Just the walls might have been £700 (in London)

Your best bet is to ask around for plasterers and strip the walls yourself

Our builder said he'd always just put up new plasterboard instead of stripping wallpaper in a room. At least then you know the base is sound. You can use joint tape and skim them with skimcoat. Put it on with a putty knife and smooth the edges with a damp sponge for a perfect finish. I say this because I spent 3 full days just doing one wall! These were steps, 1, strip outer layers of painted wallpaper. (A glass scraper is best. Just keep it flat to the wall so you don't make gouges) 2, strip old backing paper. 3, use blade again to scrape majority of old glue off. 4, scrub off remaining glue 5, rinse walls in clean water. 6, Fill any holes with filler. 7, paint in 3 coats of emulsion.

Thank you all, this has all filled me with dread. It's a 5-bed, period house. I know we can just paint over the paper, but I can really see the edges of the paper in a few rooms and it's bothering me.

Apparently the plaster is weak under the paper, so I'd be reluctant to do the stripping myself in case I made it worse!

I love @JeSuisPrest plasterer love story! 🥰 that's the dream isn't it.

pegasussy if the plaster is weak it would have to come down anyway. Strip the paper yourself and then get a plasterer to come in and make good. When I had my windows replaced half the plaster fell off the walls right down to the brickwork in some places, 1 plasterer and £350 for the day and you would never have realised, you will be very lucky if your walls just need skimming,

@pegasussy

Thank you all, this has all filled me with dread. It's a 5-bed, period house. I know we can just paint over the paper, but I can really see the edges of the paper in a few rooms and it's bothering me.

Apparently the plaster is weak under the paper, so I'd be reluctant to do the stripping myself in case I made it worse!

I love @JeSuisPrest plasterer love story! 🥰 that's the dream isn't it.

DS bout a Victorian terrace. The lathe and plaster was so poor in some places that the paper was holding is on. Two ceilings had to come down and a wall taken back to nothing as they were too weak to skim.

We have a large period house that was wood chipped to the max. We had the whole house stripped, some plaster was repaired, but most of the house was lined before painting. The decorator we used seemed to think this was the best option in an older house, the plaster was sound but hard quite a few thermal cracks. The walls that were filled and skimmed still show the cracks which move with the seasons, paper seems to be the most pragmatic solution and the finish is excellent.

I love your fairytale @JeSuisPrest - I'm sure he's a lovely chap in all other respects as well but a live-in plasterer? What a dream 😍

Everyone makes a good point about checking the integrity of the walls before you start stripping! We've just bought an Edwardian terrace which was almost entirely covered in woodchip. We've been remarkably lucky with the plaster underneath but there's no way we can afford to get the whole house replastered, as much as we'd love to. It's amazing what you can achieve with some polyfilla, sandpaper and patience though...!

That said, if you can afford it, it's one of those jobs worth doing imo. My mum had her period house entirely replastered and it made the place look and feel brand new.

At the moment plaster is really expensive due to supply issues. A local college I know keeps having break ins. They leave the computers and nick the plaster and cement!

We did this in our Edwardian terraced house, every inch of wall was covered in woodchip! We stripped it ourselves using a steamer, very time consuming but satisfying, we paid about £600 to have two reception rooms skimmed and about £500 for hallway and landing (not ceilings) that was 6 years ago. The plasterer said the plaster underneath was a bit weak and it would probably have been better to remove it all and restart but we didn't have the budget. 6 years on it's still fine other than a few cracks but I'd expect that on an older house

@Azilliondegrees but what about the bits where two pieces of paper come together? Don't you get a line?

@HasaDigaEebowai maybe I should wait until next year then?

Well yeah but unless you’re really looking for it it’s not easy to find. Certainly not something you notice day to day. I notice the cracks in the plaster/non-lined walls much more often tbh

I'd never paper over plaster if I knew I was going to paint. You can see the joins however well it's done. If you paint on plaster and it needs patching (rewiring, other work, or damage from stuff like having a window fitted) it's a piece of cake. If it's papered, the patching will show, or you have to strip and repaper. Also, if you paint on paper, it makes it harder to get off later.

I have old plaster here, much of it lime. Some of the paper here has actually to be chiselled off with an oscillating chisel (I won't bore you with the reasons). I just fill it and sand it carefully and accept that in an old house plaster doesn't look as smooth as plasterboard. And I use a very matt paint. Claypaint, where it's lime. Irregularities don't show as much. I like to think of them as 'character'.

@HasaDigaEebowai

At the moment plaster is really expensive due to supply issues. A local college I know keeps having break ins. They leave the computers and nick the plaster and cement!

Apparently due to the back log from the Seuz Canal blockage months ago. Plasterboard too.

It's taking a long time for the supply chain to get back up to speed.

We've been through this and have removed almost all of the wallpaper, wood chip etc in our house. Steamer can be good if used carefully but my preferred option is a stripping knife, soapy water in a bucket and sponge. Score the paper, soak in water, leave 20 mins then scrape away. Have the radio on - it's boring work but you can switch off mentally while you do it, it can be quite therapeutic!

We've had some rooms subsequently skimmed and others we've lined and painted ourselves. Honestly I prefer the look of the lined rooms. It's softer and the final appearance is more muted. We've messed up some of the areas near switches etc but now we know how to do it Id choose lining over skin if we had the time simply because it looks better at the end. Also saves a lot of money and the stress and inconvenience of a plasterer and their mess. Decorator is a bit cheaper too if you get someone in.

Btw it's only aged wallpaper that is a bugger to get off, so it's not the end of the world if you line and then remove and reskim after a few years. Won't be as difficult as the wallpaper I'm removing at the moment that (going by the dated graffiti underneath) is 30 years old.

When we bought the house we had a quote of about £6k to remove all the plaster back to brick, reboard and skim. In retrospect that would have been quickest and easiest option but it would have lost a lot of the character of the house. I like the curved corners and the wooden beading the 1930s plasterers used. I think what I dislike about the skimmed rooms here is the sharp corner beading that modern plasterers use, there's probably a way around that.

We paid £5k to have the whole house (walls and ceilings) stripped back and replastered. 1980s 3 bedroom house.
Moved in last year, it had the original 1980s artex ceilings and anaglypta? everywhere etc. The plasterer had to check for asbestos but thankfully it was OK.

Everywhere is just painted now and it looks so much better.