Removing wallpaper for the first time with limited DIY skills - am I going to *uck this up?!

[Gettingonabitnow]

Hi

We’ve bought a house and every room is covered in god awful wallpaper which I want off. I’ve bought a steamer and a scraper. I just want to crack on however a helpful inlaw 🙄 said I shouldn’t as I’ll mess it up and it will end up needing skimming.

Surely if I take it steady and carefully I’ll be ok??

Any tips gratefully received.
Thanks x

Just get cracking, you have absolutely no control over the condition of the current plaster underneath, it’s just one of life’s surprises. Unless you’re literally gouging the walls with the scraper and physically damaging the plaster, you just get what you get.

Ah a 2017 house should have decent plaster under it so you should be ok .
With the plug sockets it is worth loosening the screws a bit so you can get the paper from behind them and then you can also paint behind them without having to mask them .
Obviously if you are going to use a steamer or sponge or spray go really careful around plug sockets cover them up with a plastic bag and still trying to avoid dripping any water near them.

If you have any good friends or Neighbours it's worth having a stripping party get them all round give them brews order pizza in and then finish off his beer at the end of the day it's good fun and makes the job go much faster

If your house was built this millennium, the plaster should be absolutely fine underneath as long as you don't go crazy with the steamer.

I highly recommend a power sander, filler and a thorough clean with sugar soap after the paper's off to get a smooth finish for painting. Prepping the walls is the hard work - painting is easy in comparison!

Yeah, be really careful you don’t get any drips from the steamer in the plug sockets. We were a bit relaxed to start with and just put a bit of kitchen roll over it and wiped drips away - and a few drips of water got in and the power went off (it tripped the rc1 safety switch). So after we let it dry out, we duck taped old plastic takeaway containers over the sockets to completely seal them off, and picked those bits off v carefully by hand later on!

I have just finished getting the last of the painted anaglypta wallpaper off my the last room in the house to have it on.
The plaster underneath was rubbish, and in parts it had totally blown, but our house is 1960s. We just bought some poly filler ready mix plaster and did it ourselves. It was very hard work, as the paper rarely came off in those satisfying long pieces, and we had to pick at it forever. But it has now gone and the walls are being lining papered and painted.
What worked for me eventually was warm water in a spray bottle mixed with fabric softener. Amazing stuff.

@WolfFleeceSpotter

I have just finished getting the last of the painted anaglypta wallpaper off my the last room in the house to have it on. The plaster underneath was rubbish, and in parts it had totally blown, but our house is 1960s. We just bought some poly filler ready mix plaster and did it ourselves. It was very hard work, as the paper rarely came off in those satisfying long pieces, and we had to pick at it forever. But it has now gone and the walls are being lining papered and painted. What worked for me eventually was warm water in a spray bottle mixed with fabric softener. Amazing stuff.

Fabric conditioner? Wow, does that work? How? Not heard of that one….

So I’ve started using the sponge method for now. But once the paper and lining paper is off it’s really sticky underneath - is that normal? And how do you get rid of it please? Thanks

My decorator swears by using washing up liquid in warm water and soaking it. He says steamers are what wreck the plaster.

@Aprilinspringtimeshower I don’t know how it works. I had tried everything, and saw it suggested on a forum. It worked a treat.

@Gettingonabitnow look for some sugar soap to clean the walls www.wikihow.com/Sugar-Soap-Walls

Yes to the Sugar Soap. Wear gloves though, it's not as benign as it sounds.

Just have a go at using the steamer on a fairly inconspicuous wall. In a spare room or something?

I love stripping wallpaper, it's fun and easy with the steamer, we never had sticky residue left behind. It's your house now, don't be scared just give it a go!

Thanks everyone. I’ve done one strip and it is very satisfying! There isn’t really an inconspicuous wall to test out the steamer, I’m doing the downstairs toilet at the moment, guess if I only hold it on for a few seconds? X

@Gettingonabitnow ,
How is it going , did you get the rest of the loo done ?

Using a steamer is trial and error really but start off with a short burst ( 10 seconds or so ) and leave it for a bit , if the paper doesn't come off give it another shot and so on

I’ve just stripped the old wood chip in our livingroom & dining room and it actually wasn’t as bad as I was expecting!

Get a scraper with a proper blade for getting under the paper, I bought some solution in B&Q to spray on first and it really helped, and had a steamer too.

I was expecting the whole lot to need skimming but it’s all pretty much come off cleanly and we’ll get away with a few minor patches of filler and painting.

[quote WolfFleeceSpotter]@Aprilinspringtimeshower I don’t know how it works. I had tried everything, and saw it suggested on a forum. It worked a treat.

@Gettingonabitnow look for some sugar soap to clean the walls www.wikihow.com/Sugar-Soap-Walls[/quote]
I had to come back to this thread. OMG. LIFE CHANGING
fabric conditioner really works amazingly. Just stripped a full wall of embossed wallpaper in 2 hours. Elsewhere same amount was taking half a day.
And bloody hell it smells a lot better than steamy wallpaper mixed with solvite smell.
Thank you so much- everyone needs to try this
💐💐

@Dartfordwarblerautumn tell me more, EXACTLY what did you do with it??

I’m at the sanding stage of my walls now before painting! X

Well I’m now having my lunch and a cup of tea having completely finished my stripping of 2 full walls, I had set aside a full day to do- feeling very smug with myself🤣. I shall do my sugar soap and fill holes then go off to buy the paint instead this afternoon
I literally took wolffleece spotter at her word. I filled a spray bottle with a capful of fabric conditioner and top it up with water-+ guess it was a litre spray bottle. So it was still fairly concentrated
I then sprayed on top surface of embossed paper ( this is 1980s paper I reckon, complete with floral border 😱) I left 5 mins then used scrapper to get a corner and ripped off top layers ( admittedly that usually happens when I use water and vinegar). I don’t score it at that stage as I then get large pieces off by pulling gently. Then once top surface off I sprayed the backing paper well with the solution agian, and literally the paper began to bubbly away for the wall. I have not achieved that before- I didn’t score it, just waited 10 mins then again got a corner and gently pulled it off- large sections came off easily in one go. Completely amazing.
Then I just went round the very few stubborn bits
And the room smells lovely 🤣🤣
No wall paper stripper used at all - stayed in it’s box!

Wow that’s amazing! Going to try it!

I haven’t done the sugar soap stage, wonder if I’m going to regret that when I come to paint it! Sanded it down earlier, it’s pretty smooth and using forgiving matt paint so 🤞

Wallpaper steamers do take a bit of practice, and are very dependant on the type of paper that has been used. If you have lots to do I recommend an angled scraper, such as.
www.wickes.co.uk/Professional-Heavy-Duty-Scraper---100mm/p/154805
(N.B. often the blade needs to be reversed before using, as they deliberately fit them with the blunt edge out) took me most of the house to realise)

Most steamers are "continuous", but there are some better ones with a trigger control which makes it much easier (Karcher do a wallpaper attachment for one of their steamers)

If you're doing the whole house, getting a skim coat may be cheaper than you think, cost varies hugely depending on where you are, but perhaps £300 a room. (bare in mind paint is usually cheaper than wallpapering and labour).

Talking of paint, if you're doing the whole house, and you're gutting the rooms, a paint sprayer is huge time saver.
Messy but fast, with a bit of practice, you should be able to spray an average sized room in under and hour per coat, raw plaster will need, 3-4 coats.

www.screwfix.com/p/wagner-w-690-flexio-630w-electric-paint-sprayer-220-240v/2884t

But you have to spend the time masking everything up, i.e. windows, light fittings, etc.

P.S. Buy a "hop-up" if you haven't got one!

Stripping wall paper is the best part of decorating, mainly because I'm way better at it than hubby. Love doing that bit and then paying someone else to do the painting and finishing elements which we are naff at.