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WALLPAPER REMOVAL IS
MESSY,
TIME-CONSUMING,
AND IRRITATING!
That's why you want to do it right... the FIRST TIME!!
Dear NH,
I live in NYC, NY. I found your site via a web search for home repair. Question: How do you remove wallpaper? And what should be done to the walls prior to painting?
TI,
Wallpaper removal is fairly easy, but quite messy. There are two ways to remove it, aside from ripping it off the walls with your bare hands. Don't laugh... I have seen wallpaper that would fall from the walls with a sideways glance. However, if yours was that easy, you would be practicing an icy stare instead of e-mailing me!
All kidding aside (never), if you can get under a corner of the paper, try to tear it off dry. If it works, it will save you loads of work. In some cases, everything but a small amount of paste residue will remain. You can clean it off with some wallpaper stripper and a sponge. In other cases, the facing (on vinyl papers, primarily) will come off and leave a paper backing stuck on the wall. This backing will be easy to get off with method 2.
METHOD 1: The first method is using a wallpaper steamer, a piece of equipment that can be rented. It sends steam through a hose to a flat metal plate similar to an iron. Pressing this plate on the wall forces steam into the wallpaper, which softens the paper and paste. This allows you to strip the paper with a wide putty knife.
This method harkens to the days of plaster walls, still in abundance in older homes but a relative rarity in the last twenty or thirty years. Unfortunately, aggressive steaming can damage paper-faced wallboards, especially if the wallboard wasn't fully sealed prior to wallpapering. In new construction, walls that are going to be papered are often not primed with paint, but just coated with sizing. The sizing seals enough to allow the wallpaper to stick, but offers little protection to the walls otherwise. This leads us to Method 2...
METHOD 2: The second method involves the use of a chemical agent that is added to hot water. This chemical is an enzyme that soaks into the paper and dissolves the paste. It takes a little longer than the steamer, but does a fine job and is less damaging to the walls. The trick is to allow the chemical to do its work, and not to rush into scraping too soon. The paper should be kept wet with the chemical until the paper is loose enough to scrape off EASILY.
The wallpaper stripper is applied with a sprayer, either a hand-held trigger spray type for very small jobs or a pump-type pressurized garden sprayer for entire rooms. Cover the floors with plastic tarps under newspapers to absorb the excess spray and collect the old paper. As waste accumulates, throw away a few layers of newspaper and put additional paper on the tarps.
If the original paper is a non-porous vinyl, you may have to rip the vinyl face from the wall before using either removal method, because neither the steam nor the chemical stripper will easily penetrate the vinyl.
If the vinyl face in not easily pulled off, all is not lost! You can make small perforations in the vinyl to allow the steam or chemical to pass through. There are two ways to accomplish this neatly and with minimal wall damage. The first is to use a commercial tool called a Paper Tiger. Simply rolling the Paper Tiger over the wall causes a small roller with pin-like protrusions to perforate the surface of the paper, leaving the wall underneath undamaged.
A lower tech alternative is to use a moderately stiff wire brush. Simply drag the brush across the surface of the wallpaper to scratch it. Just don't get too carried away, or the marks will pass through to the wall below, forcing you to do additional wall repair later.
After the paper is removed, you can remove small amounts of residual paste using hot water and just about any wall washing detergent, or you can use the wallpaper stripping chemical as a final wash. If there is lots of paste left, though, you may need to respray the walls with the chemical stripper to soften it. Then, use a scraper or putty knife to remove the residual glue, followed by a final rinse with a sponge dipped in the stripper.
If you are going to paper again, your prep is almost done. Just give the walls a light sanding to remove any roughness and clean up all the dust before beginning the wallpapering process.
If you are going to paint, prime the walls with one coat of a sealing/stain killing oil-based primer. You may have to sand again after this prime coat. The roughness is more paste being lifted by the primer. If you don't sand it off and then coat with a latex paint, it will be difficult or impossible for you to remove the roughness later!
After the primer is fully dry, you can sand it , clean up all the dust, and then put one or two coats of any paint your heart desires!
Good luck,
NH