Last weekend we started to remove the horrible wallpaper from our walls. It’s a really tough physical job. I kind of thought that it would be that we would just put the steamer on the wall, run it down the panel of wallpaper and the paper would peel off in one big sheet. To my dismay, it didn’t work like that.

There is a reasonable amount of information on the net about removing paper, but after a while we sort of figured out our own way of removing our particular wallpaper. For anyone that’s interested, here is what we did to remove the wallpaper on our walls, in 4 easy processes.

First of all though, these are the essential tools you will need:

*A stanley knife
*A scraper
*A ladder
*A kettle jug
*A wallpaper steamer
*Drop sheets
*A cloth and a bucket of warm water

As we had a lot of wallpaper to remove, we were each working on the walls and we each had one of the following tools from the above list:

*A stanley knife
*A scraper
*A wallpaper steamer
*A cloth and a bucket of warm water

Process 1

* Firstly, start by moving all your stuff into another room (preferably one that you will not be removing wallpaper in).

* Walk around the room and see if there are any places that have a tiny bit of wallpaper peeling off. You can usually find some pieces peeling off at the seams or at the corners. Run your scraper behind the peeling bit and try and peel as much of it off as you can. The more paper you can remove like this, the better. You might be lucky and peel off a really big strip of paper. We were lucky with two of our bedrooms – we just lifted up a small piece where the wallpaper was already lifting off and lo and behold the whole panel, right up to the ceiling, came off in a big strip.

*You will notice that the paper that you remove will leave a layer behind on the wall. This is the adhesive layer and you will need to use the steamer on this stuff.

*Once you have peeled off all the bits that are starting to peel off, then you can start the next process.

Process 2
(Note: this process may not be so necessary if your wallpaper does not have a vinyl top on it. Our wallpaper is vinyl coated so we had to do this process)

*Go around the room and score the wallpaper with the stanley knife. This is absolutely necessary if your wallpaper is vinyl coated. The aim of scoring the wallpaper is to scratch the wallpaper up so that when you start using the steamer in process 3 below, the steam and the moisture will penetrate into the paper. If you have vinyl coated wallpaper and you do not score the paper, the steam and the moisture will not penetrate into the paper and this will make process number 3 below five times harder.

This is what our scored wallpaper looked like:

*You should make sure that you are only scoring the paper, and not going through to the actual wall.

*You should do both vertical and horizontal scores, so that the moisure has more chance of getting into the paper.

*Scoring the paper is very tough work and is very hard on your arms if you go really mad at it. Take it slow and have a break from time to time.

* There is a purpose made tool that you can get from hardware stores, called a ‘paper tiger’, which is designed to scratch up wallpaper.  You may find this tool is easier on your arms than using the stanley knife scoring method.  Using a paper tiger may also be easier on your walls if you have soft plaster walls.

Process 3

*Place your drop sheets around the bottom of the walls. This helps prevent water which drips down the wall from ruining your carpet/floor.

*Fill up your kettle jug and turn it on. When it has boiled, pour it into the wallpaper steamer. You may need to boil the jug 3 or 4 times to fill up the steamer. Close the cap tightly and turn the machine on. It takes about 10 minutes for the machine to get to full pressure and then it starts spurting out the steam.

This is what our wallpaper steamer looked like:

*Starting at the bottom of the wall, place the steaming paddle on the wall. If you are right handed, you will hold the staming paddle with your left hand and start steaming on the rightmost side of the wall. If you are left handed, you will hold the steaming paddle with your right hand and start steaming on the leftmost side of the wall. Leave the steamer on the wall in the same spot for abot 30 seconds. With your left hand (assuming you are right handed), move the steaming paddle across the wall about an inch to the left. Then, using the scraper, start scraping at the paper that you have just steamed, like this:

*Then when you have finished scraping that first section of the paper off, you can move the steaming paddle another inch over to the left and start scraping the new section of paper off the wall.

*As you go along, you will get into a routine of scraping, then moving the paddle along, then scraping, then moving the paddle along.

*You will eventually make it to the other side of the wall. Now that you have one entire line across the wall done, you will then go back to the right hand side of the wall (assuming you are right handed – if you are left handed you will go back to the left hand side of the wall) and just above the first line of paper you have just removed, you will start the steamping/moving/scraping process again.

* Oh and it doesn’t hurt to have a dog to help :)

Process 4

*When you have steamed a whole wall, you should get your cloth and bucket of water and wipe down the wall. This will get rid of all the gunky adhesive residue that sometimes gets left on the wall after you have steamed and scraped it.

Process 5

*Have a martini. That part of the job is done.  Next for the skim coating.

We have 1930’s lathe and plaster walls which have a few cracks and bumps in them, so we will need to sand the walls back just a little and then do a skim coat of plaster to get the walls smooth and ready for painting. Stay tuned for the next post on skim coating.