Would you do this yourself or get professionals in?

[64rabbits]

Strip wallpaper (including ceiling woodchip!), prepare and paint stairs, hallway, 2 bedrooms and a living room..?
Is it too much for a single person with not much experience to do by themselves? I'd need to buy all the equipment.
Would you do rather do this yourself and save the cash or get professionals painter decorators in and save the hassle?

Painting over it will just look crap. A wallpaper stripper is about 50 quid and then you’ll need a scraper tool that is about a tenner. The machine will eject steam and that’ll loosen up the wallpaper and then you just scrape off. It’s not hard and it needn’t be back breaking work - I’ve done it plenty of times. Just put some music on and go for it. It will create a mess so you’ll want to budget for some dust sheets but they’re only a few quid each.

The bannisters would be similarly easy to sand down and repaint. You can unscrew them from the supports really easily and then take them outside and it’s just a matter of time. If doing yourself I’d be tempted to just buy new ones - not that expensive and will save a load of time and hassle.

For the ceiling you could potentially overboard the chip. You’d buy some plasterboard and then secure it in situ over what is there. You’d then need to plaster or pay someone to do it, but that wouldn’t cost the earth for something that size. Infact you’d just get the plasterer to do the whole job perhaps as it’ll be a two person matter to get board on the ceiling, though I have done so alone using props.

This is all SO helpful. Thank you to everyone that has replied.

If you've stripped wallpaper before, did you remove your radiators or is it not necessary?

Luckily the ceiling woodchip isn't in all the rooms, just bathroom and small room, so it might not be too bad.

I’d do what you can yourself, and save you money for flooring and possible plastering. Do you have a friend or family who could help you one day? Rent or borrow a wallpaper steamer, it will really help. You may need to get the walls skimmed with plaster afterwards so better to pay for that. Prepping and painting isn’t hard, I’d never pay for that

Thank you. I think I'm going to do this, or at least have a go, and then save the funds for plastering or getting someone in if I get really fed up with it all!

Do a bedroom and see how you get on. Then do the other enclosed rooms. Get somebody in to do the hall, stairs and landing.

If the budget wind cover it all feta professional to do the hard bits, like the celling. But also for me it's massively dependant on time. Do you have time to do it? At the moment I'd struggle so I'd pay somone. Which is what I'm doing!

Having seen the picture , it’s such a small area of ceiling ( no offence meant , but when you are running up and down stairs I don’t think you will be looking at the ceiling at all .) I would be tempted to leave the ceiling and just paint it over . The walls , totally your choice , of course you could leave them , I wouldn’t myself , but then I’m sure many others would disapprove of my 1950’s ornate wallpapered ceiling in one of my rooms !

If the ceiling has been wallpapered separately from the walls then there should be a natural line where you remove the paper to . Otherwise you would need to score a blade through with a straight line to separate the wall and ceiling paper before you start stripping .

When we originally bought our house the previous owners were a lazy bunch and one room had 4 layers of wallpaper over each other and then a dodgy paint job on top of the last layer of woodchip . Anything can be fixed with time and effort .

Also not 100% clear from the photo , but is it definitely woodchip , if it’s only textured paper then a lot easier to remove.

I think the other thing is when you get professionals in, costa can spiral.

The previous owners of my house were clearly not experienced in diy. Every job turns out bigger.

By doing most myself, I can come across the issues. And when I have had professionals in they can give an accurate quote. Rather than starting then uncovering issues and having to add on.

Even something as simple as replacing shelves they left has been a pain. I am stripping the wood work at the moment. For some reason when I have got down a couple of layers, they seem to have covered almost everything in a thin layer of silicone filler. So it’s taking longer. If it took a professional longer they would charge more.

I'd strip it myself, get someone in to skim
& possible paint it myself.

Ive wallpapered and painted but stripping woodchip is a back breaking task (especially on a ceiling) and you might need skimming after. I also could not reach the top bits of a stairwell. I'd definitely get a pro in.

With regard to the radiators it depends is the answer. If you’re a perfectionist then they need to come off to get behind. If not then don’t bother. You can get long paint brushes made to get behind rads which might be an option.

dropping the radiators is pretty straight forward, but get it you might not be confident. Lots of YouTube vids to watch and you just shut off the hot and cold feeds (either side of rad), unscrew the nuts, tray or something underneath to catch what’s in the radiator and then plug it. Take outside, drain, then reverse to fit and fill up your boiler to ensure pressure ok.

If you're on Tik Tok, have a look at Joanne Hay Decorating. She has some excellent "how to" videos. (I wish she covered my area.)

For that amount of work, I would get a professional. Especially with it being stairs, as I could easily see myself toppling over.

Last time I stripped wallpaper off a ceiling - I found it was the wallpaper that had been holiding the ceiling plaster in place !
Ended up being a big messy job !

I've stripped woodchip off every house I've ever lived in, including ceilings. Sometimes the ceiling underneath is OK, sometimes not. You can hire industrial wallpaper strippers, but be careful, as the heat might take the plaster off if you hold it too long in one area.

If it were me on a budget, I'd strip the wallpaper, that's not a skillful job and get someone in to paint the stairs, but do bathroom and bedrooms myself.

No decorator will be worried that you stripped the walls yourself, stripping woodchip is a horrible job and even the professionals don't really want to do it.

Ive done similar, because I had do. It took ages though, especially the steaming.

Cheat on the ceiling. Get plaster board and a stud finder and just fix new plasterboard over the current ceiling and dry line it (watch YouTube videos it’s not hard) and then you can paint it yourself. You need to unwire and rewire the lights, and if there’s any coving it needs to be redone, but it’s far and away the easiest solution (bar taking down the ceilings but you might not want that much mess)