Wallpaper removal..

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Jay H

New Member
Nov 20, 2006
659
NJ
I'm planning to replace my bathroom's wallpaper, floor and wall tile, bathub and walls next summer and just thinking ahead.

What's the best way to remove wallpaper on drywalls? Do you have to heat it up with an iron or heat gun? I've never dealt with wallpaper and I plan on simply painting it with bathroom type paint upon removal....

Jay
 
I just did this a few months ago and asked a friend that is a paper hanger. His advise was above all PATIENCE!

If you don't have buy a small pump sprayer and a wallpaper pin wheel (can't remember the name), it is hand held with small wheels underneath that punch small holes in the paper.

#1 - punch the holes in a small area, maybe 2 sheet widths, ceiling to floor
#2 - spray with hot water and WAIT (here is the patience part)
#3 - about every 10 minutes, spray again. Basically, keep the paper wet for 30 minutes.
#4 - start from ceiling and start to pull off the paper. If it does not come off easily, apply water and wait.
#5 - after all of the paper is off, punch holes and spray the next section, and spray the section just completed.
#6 - scrape off the glue left behind, then use a sponge and wipe.

I had a large room (18x15x11 foot ceilings) and all of the glue did not come off. I rented a powered dry wall sander that worked great, then applied KILLS and installed the new paper. The main thing is patience, let the water do it's job. The paper will come off if you do your part.
 
Jay H said:
I'm planning to replace my bathroom's wallpaper, floor and wall tile, bathub and walls next summer and just thinking ahead.

What's the best way to remove wallpaper on drywalls? Do you have to heat it up with an iron or heat gun? I've never dealt with wallpaper and I plan on simply painting it with bathroom type paint upon removal....

Jay

My wife and I just did this a few months ago. It's a pretty easy job for the most part. As mentioned above you can do this with just a few simple tools -- the wall paper removal tool, pump sprayer (like you would use to water/mist house plants) and a razor blade.

Scour the paper with the wall paper removal tool . . . as mentioned it has a wheel with small serrated teeth that imbed itself into the wallpaper (you can pick these up at most hardware stores for little money.)

Spray with warm water . . . my wife added vinegar which also seemed to help remove the glue as well . . . plus it made the house smell like a big pickle which could be a negative or positive depending on whether you like pickles or not.

The wallpaper will bubble up and you can carefully remove it . . . spray frequently and as needed to gingerly remove the paper.

Afterwards you may need to use the razor or sand down any glue left on the wallboard.
 
The prior two posts have some excellent advice. My wife and I took off 4-5 layers of wallpaper on every wall at our summer home a couple of years ago. I think the wallpaper was used partially as insulation on this very drafty 125 year old home. The only thing I would add is that there is a chemical which you can buy at the hardware store which, when added to the water in your sprayer, speeds up the removal a bit. Still, as others have mentioned this is a slow process and patience is indeed the key.

ChipTam
 
I second (third?) the above posts. Generally wallpaper in a bathroom is vinyl faced which means you have to make cuts/holes for the water to soak in. I've been doing this throughout my house on various occasions. You can lightly score paper or poke small holes with a razor blade, I used the little wheel-perforator, I think it was called "Paper Tiger" but it puts thousands of small holes in the paper. Then I mixed up some wall paper paste remover with warm water, sprayed it on (start at top so the excess runs down) and waited. After a couple of applications, the wallpaper either lifted right off the wall (aided with gentle scraping from a 4" putty knife) or at least the vinyl front peeled away from the paper back. Then you can hit the paper with a second dose of the paste remover and it, too, will fall right off the wall in a few minutes time.

The vinegar / citric acid home remedy stuff may work pretty well, too but I've never tried it. I was thoroughly surprised at how well the 'professional' stuff worked.
 
Good previous posts. Hot water/steam should loosen up that old glue.

If you want to remove the paper all at once, wait until February and then try and boil down a batch of maple syrup in the desired room. My friend's mother
found this to be a great way to remove the wallpaper in her kitchen. Unfortunately, it wasn't her intent.
 
homebrewz said:
Good previous posts. Hot water/steam should loosen up that old glue.

If you want to remove the paper all at once, wait until February and then try and boil down a batch of maple syrup in the desired room. My friend's mother
found this to be a great way to remove the wallpaper in her kitchen. Unfortunately, it wasn't her intent.

..and convert my bathroom into a sugar shack???? Unfortunately, it's my only bathroom and I don't think I have enough wood anyway!!! :D

Thanks everybody for the replies, very helpful, makes me want to remove the vinyl paper now!

Jay
 
If that drywall was never primed or painted that wall paper will never come off without ruining the drywall and your better of to cut off any louse seams with a sharp utility knife and spackle and prim with a oil based primmer like cover stain by zinnser and then paint with some benjamin moore acrylic wall paint
 
Joe Buck said:
If that drywall was never primed or painted that wall paper will never come off without ruining the drywall and your better of to cut off any louse seams with a sharp utility knife and spackle and prim with a oil based primmer like cover stain by zinnser and then paint with some benjamin moore acrylic wall paint

That I wouldn't know as I'm not the original owner (have only lived here for 2 years) and don't know what's underneath the paper. I'll keep that in mind when I go at it... The thing is that half the wall is tiled (the lower half) and half the wall is wallpapered, so I assume there has got to be some kind of backing board on the tile so if I want to go paint, I'd have to do some drywall work anyway... It's always a mystery!

Jay
 
When i redid my old house's dining room (plaster walls, not drywall) all we did was wash the wallpaper in a very hot vinegar/water solution and peel it off, scraping in some spots.
 
My wife and I have removed more wallpaper from our house that I can to think about! (5 layers in the kitchen) We found that a 50/50 mixture of hot water and fabric softner works well. (and smells a lot better than vinegar)
 
If the drywall was not seized(primed) you going to be skim coating the walls after removing the wall paper. I went through this in 2 bathrooms in my old house.
The thing with teeth is called a Paper Tiger. Be careful not to press so hard that you are scoring the drywall paper. I tried the enzyme crap, with the sprayer & warm water blah blah blah.
If its not seized, your in for a long haul. I ended up scraping the walls by hand. I did buy an orbital sander and sued 60 & 80 grit which took the glue off rather well.
I also had to skim coat the walls 3x with spackle. turned out great, was alot of time & alot of energy.
Had to remove some in this house, and bought a small wagner steamer made for wallpaper removal. Found at least in that spot it was seized and the steam loosened it right up and I easily scraped it off with a 6" spackle knife.
If its primed your good, if not, prepare for the worst.
 
LEES WOOD-CO said:
A dozen of my wifes parmesean cajun ranch buffalo wings and a dozen yuenglings and I can take the wall paper off anything. :bug:

LMFAO
Or even add more wallpaper.
 
Like others have mentioned if the walls were not primed things are going to get tough. I spent several hours trying to remove wall paper in our main bathroom and I gave up and got the hammers out.

For me it was much faster to remove the sheet rock and re-sheet it then to screw around trying for countless hours to pull paper off that only ended up pulling the sheet rock paper off and left me with very little to work with.

You said new shower/tub. Then your best bet would be to remove the sheetrock there so you can install a proper surround instead of a glue over the surface mount style.
 
I have been pretty successful removing old paper from unprimed drywall. Of course, it has been easier if the drywall did have primer or 'sizing' on it before papering. Regarding that "enzyme crap", I have used Zinser DIF many times and consider it well worth using. (Disclaimer: No financial connection with Zinser or any other company- I'm just a satisfied customer). DIF has worked well enough for me that I use it always. I believe it is more effective than plain warm water alone. Hot water spray and/or steam is probably pretty good as an alternative. I'd be concerned about possible paper pulloff. YMMV. I prefer the enzyme.

Perforating the old paper is good practice, and repeatedly wetting the paper and keeping it wet makes a huge difference! Take your time and it will go much easier. Get in a rush, and you are definitely going to pull off some of the paper on the drywall. Not good.

OTOH I have probably never encountered a wallpaper installation where at least a few minor tears didn't happen to the drywall. At least I don't remember any. Minor drywall repairs after pulling wallpaper off are simply routine IMO. Besides, people who paper often conceal various drywall defects behind that paper. For paint, you can't tolerate them, so you have to fix them. Plan on at least a little minor patching.

I believe it's also important to continue to wet the now paperless drywall with DIF and carefully scrape off the sometimes thick glue layer that remains behind, using a stiff scraper. After the drywall has had overnight to dry out, a light sanding is also very much worth the time (removes any remaining glue and other defects- if you want high quality work). Leave that glue on there, get a crappy paint job. Your choice. Note that the job can thus take up to 3 days, allowing for overnight complete drying of the saturated paper on the drywall, then another night to allow conventional drywall 'mud' patches to dry. Sand and paint on the 3rd day. Of course, you absolutely can telescope the entire operation into a single day. There are various shortcut products and methods. I wouldn't do that, however. A little paper separation can happen whenever you wet drywall that much. You can see it better and you can mitigate it better after an overnight dry. Plastering over wet, separated drywall paper leads to hollow bulges after your drywall mud dries. Then you get to fix it a second time.

BTW I have done this job many times, mostly for others, and always get rave reviews about the quality of my painting. Cut corners, and you may not. You will always get better painting results if you have the patience to give the drywall overnight to dry out before going on- also sand- and prime as well, in almost every case. Although all this is optional, this is how to get the best results. I doubt many of the pro painter companies do this. Time is money in that business. Get that big sprayer out and lay it on there thick. But pray your paint supplier didn't just reformulate their paint last month to meet some new EPA VOC requirements. A real stomach turner is to watch paint applied too thick start to develop runs. That happened to me one time when I reluctantly agreed to use some 'customer specified' latex SG paint I wasn't familiar with. Then you get to run around catching those runs with a brush. Anyway, if you leave glue on the wall, you get a sandpaper texture, then you might try to lay the paint on thicker to cover that. Better: proper surface prep, primer coat(s), two roller coats of good quality paint.

It's all a tradeoff- you want it fast or you want it best? It all depends on how much patience the homeowner has for extended jobs. I was surprised that most folks I did this for wanted best. But some folks are definitely not painters. They hate painting, just want to get it over with.
 
My vote is to forget about taking wallpaper off the wall. If you are going to be doing that much work in the room, remove the sheetrock entirely and replace it with greenboard or Densarmor. It will take not much more time than removing the paper, you get to see what is behind the walls (mold, plumbing leaks, substandard wiring, etc) and you will have a perfectly clean, moisture-proof surface with which to work. In a year you will not mind that it took you a day or so longer to do it right.
 
OK, a rainy day in NJ, I can't cut firewood so I thought I'd do some inside projects so I started the bathroom wallpaper/tile removal.

I took off some towel holders an an external medicine cabinet and took off one tile... Looks to me like basic sheetrock and some kind of thinset mortar was used to do the tile, at least it doesn't look like any backer board that I'm familiar with. This is probably 15-20 years old. So I guess I'm going to just resheetrock the whole bathroom, including the floor... So I'm going to just remove the tile that is close to the wsheetrock joints and then when I can get my BIL to help, redo the sheetrock on the walls and floot (also tile that I'd like to remove)... Ah... spring/summer project... sigh!

Jay
 
The primeir hanger that I use in the bussines here has a membership in Amway for the sole purpose of being able to buy LOC for paper removal. He tells me that it thins out his water for better penatration and that the residule glue stays softer longer for easier removal. Wana listen to a tape? LOL
Cutter
 
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