Stripping Wallpaper and Re-painting...DIY?

J

JohnnyM

2,500+ Posts
Moving into a new house and there are a few rooms that have wallpaper that really needs to go. Is this something I should do myself or are we talking about professional help?

The rooms are: entryway, kitchen, 2 bathrooms. If they were just big blank walls I guess it'd be a much easier job to do myself, but there are a lot of small spots and tricky areas.
 
It is a lot of work and messy but unless you can find some neiborhood kids to do it cheaply I would do it yourself. Just get a couple of the scrapers (round deals with sharp wheels) run it all over the paper and spray with the wallpaper remover stuff. We did ours this summer and it took a couple days of intermitant work to finish 2 bathrooms and the kitchen/dining room. One thing to remember is sometimes people put new wallpaper over old, so their might be layers.
Once the paper is off you will most likely need to sand the walls (and repair any damage you have caused).
 
We had to take off several layers in our old house. We used a steamer for wallpaper (I think Wagner). It went through 4 layers and brought it out. I would highly recommend it.

Just make sure you hold it over the area long enough for it to come off. It's not a quick fix, but it's a lot easier than other methods. However, I've never tried the spray.
 
If you're lucky stripping the wallpaper is easy and quick. If not, well, both ways tend to be messy and a lot of manual labor. Google should come up with a lot or articles but most of them don't go over what can go wrong and how much work it is.

I did my kitchen/breakfast area in June. The wallpaper came off easily, the glue did not. The ******* glued it to the drywall. Took 3 days to remove everything. The worst part was above the cabinets. Then 2 days to spackle and sand and clean (#$@!). Then took 2 days to prime and paint the whole kithen. About 2 peoples worth of labor. If I had to do it again, I'd count on about 4 days.

You want to strip the wallpaper by scoring it and using a steamer (rentable) or soaking it in a LOT of water (from a spray bottle or garden sprayer). If you're lucky it all peels off in big pieces, if not, you scrape with a wall scraper or putty knife. I ended up sanding a lot of the glue off. Also, water seemed just as good as the spray on gel. Have some fans lying around for quicker water drying.

I think the worst case is when they've glued the paper directly onto drywall. In that case you are going to damage the drywall when removing. This is easy enough to repair but takes time and effort since you have to respackle with a smooth skim coat (or two) and then lightly sand. Buy lots of contractors plastic and tape for easier cleanup. This is the messiest part of the whole job.

Next you tape the kitchen and prime/seal with a drywall sealer. Killz is probably the easiest brand to find. Spackle and re-prime/seal if necessary. Then paint. With a ton of tiny spaces and angles invest in buying an armful of those mini rollers and sponges.

And don't overlook all the peripheral crap you need to buy: paint thinner, paint trays/buckets, rollers, roller brushes, roller extenders, a ladder, several large cups, brushes, towels, eye protection, breathing filters, wood glue, sanding equipment etc. You probably need a good chunk of that stuff as a homeowner anyways but it can be rough if you get it all at once.
 
Removing wallpaper is THE SUCK. I did a couple of rooms at my parents house last year, and it was awful. The steamer didn't work, the gel didn't work, hot water didn't work - it was soooo slow and tedious. But it can be done, and you might get lucky and it could come off easily.
 
I had hell removing the wall paper in my bathroom. It was glued directly to unfinished drywall and I damaged it getting the paper off. Bad mistake as the repairs were not easy and I had lots of trouble with the drywall layers puffing up after contact with sealer or joint compound. I've got one more bathroom to do and since the paper in it has no bubbles, I'm going to paint it with sealer and then with paint.

The kitchen wallpaper came off much easier. I used a scorer, sponge, water and a scraper. Took just a couple of hours for 4 walls about 6 feet by 8 feet each.

Hiring someone can be a problem if they don't know have much experience. I trust myself a lot more than most handyman types.
 
I decided to have someone remove the wallpaper in my bathroom this year, then re-paint. There were 2 layers of paper. The top layer was the self adhesive kind and it came off easy. The original paper on the bottom was the old fashoned style that almost melds with the sheetrock.

The guy that pained took off what he could then put on 2 coats of Kilz primer, then textured, then painted. It was one mess that I was happy to personally avoid. You probably can get some good advice at the paint departments at Home Depot or Lowes too.
 
I have used a steamer and the solution at different times, and everyone is right. If the wallpaper was put directly on the drywall removal will be tedious and somewhat difficult and a steamer does not make it easier. If the wall was prepped and sealed first it will come off much easier, especially with a steamer.

I also had to repair some major damage to the sheet rock when I removed builder installed wallpaper (directly on the drywall). Home Depot had a huge bucket of joint compound for $5 or something ridiculously low at the time. I was able to patch and retexture the wall with a bunch left over.

Good luck.

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thanks for all the responses. i guess it's impossible to tell whether or not it's worth my time until i give it a shot and see how easy the paper comes off.
now for the texturing, how hard is THAT? i've had other friends tell me that the texturing is the part that i'll mess up enough to need a pro do it, but maybe they just aren't good at it and therefore don't want anyone else to be either.
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i think the gf thinks this is going to be a lot more fun than it will turn out being.
 
John, I think you should skip the texture. Hire someone.

It's easier than passing the bar, but you'll really **** it up the first time you try it. If you have a garage wall to practice on, rent the machine and give it a go. Home Depot rents one, and has an instructional video with it, but I still don't think it's something the average lawyer should tackle (Nick being slightly above or below average, depending on your point-of-view). You should be able to hire out the texture job cheap.

You and the better half can tackle the paint yourselves
 
JohnnyM: How much are you retexturing?

I had to do one solid wall. I had a big piece of drywall I practiced on, and even though the first try looked OK on it, the result on the wall looked terrible however. I sanded it down a bit and consulted the experts here and tried again with excellent results the second time. Almost matches the existing texture.

I used joint compound and the thickest nap roller I could find, no machine, no video. The keys were the consistency of the joint compound - for the texture I wanted, it had to be like sour cream and a really thick nap roller. Also you have to resist the urge to roll over an area again and again!

I will be retexturing more walls over spring break probably now that I know what I am doing. It was not too bad - if you like doing those kind of things.

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Just a note - if you do paint over the wallpaper (did it in the parent's kitchen), they recommend using a oil based paint, so you don't accidentally dissolve the wall paper paste and have the stuff slough off on you while you're painting it.
 
We decided to strip the wallpaper down using a spray on gel. The kitchen we attacked first, both because it was the largest but also because it had the largest blank walls so we thought it would be a good starting ground.

Overall the process was relatively painless, if not tiresome and a bit messy. We used some wall scorers, or whatever they are called, and a spray on gel. The spray on gel was pretty good, but we used a LOT of it. The paper wasn't glued directly on the sheetrock, so that was good news. I did take a couple small scrapes out of the rock, but we didn't do any major damage.

We did find out that our master bath has 2 layers of paper, so that's not good news. We stripped off the top layer already (leaving the adhesive behind), so that should help as far as letting the gel penetrate.

Thanks for the advice on here.
 
Texture can be done more than one way. Knock down where you spray and then drag a knife(tape and float knife) of piece of wood. Ot you can do what I did and just get a texture roller and a bucket of texture and roll the stuff on.

Floating and also taping is really pretty damn easy, as is texturing. Like anything new do a small space first that is NOT the most visable.
 
With that many rooms, I would suggest having someone do it if you have the money. I did a bathroom and kitchen and it was pretty messy. Getting the wall paper off and repairing whatever parts you messed up doing it takes a pretty good while. After spackling over those parts, I used a spray on texture. It looks fine for the small bathroom and kitchen that I did, but if it was a living room or something like that, I think I would want the normal splatter-type texture. There are lots of ways to go. Probably just find out what you want the texture to be and if you don't want it to look like a modern, thrown together type texture, you will probably want to hire someone to come in and spray the walls with a texture. I don't know that you can rent the guns for that anywhere, but I could be wrong. I'm happy with the way my stuff looks, but you sound like you have lots of rooms to do and probably don't want to take the chance of spending all that time and having it not look as good as you would like.
 
After turning a weekend master bathroom project into one that stretched out over 4 weekends (same as everyone else...builder glued the paper right to the sheetrock
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) last spring we haven't had much desire to tackle the other 2 bathrooms & kitchen yet.

One tip for removing the wallpaper that does work pretty well: mix up a 10:1 solution of water & Downy fabric softener in your spray bottle. Works like a charm. Downy's also great for cleaning up your brushes afterwards.
 
Yeah we've run into some really tough **** now. The kitchen paper came down easy, but I believe it was also the most recent.

Next we tackled the master bathroom, where there were two layers of paper. We started by peeling the first layer all the way off, just leaving the adhesive. Then we scored and sprayed and....nada. That second layer, as well as the adhesive for the first layer, ain't budging. We did get a lot of the adhesive off some of the walls, but it was extremely tedious. I think this other layer of paper is the original from 1983. I think with a LOT of work we could get that adhesive from the top layer off, but we can't seem to penetrate the original layer at all.

BigWill - I know you suggested applying some shellac based primer over old paper, retexturing, and painting. Do you think we would have to get all that adhesive off first, or if it's on there pretty tight can we shellac over that as well? I have someone coming out to give me an estimate on the retexturing today, so I'll ask him too. The two guys at Home Depot paint department advised against texturing over a shellaced wallpaper since they said the weight might take the paper off.

And the other bathroom we tried only had 1 layer, but it was equally as frustrating.
 
We stripped the wallpaper in 3 bedrooms last year. If I had it to do over again, I would have paid to have it professionally done. Ghost of Tom Joad speaks true on the fabric softener - works as well as the commercial spray on stuff.

Tedious, boring, messy work. If you get in a hurry, you're going to botch up your walls. Scraping, sanding, washing, priming walls:
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Every wall in our house has heavy wallpaper (fake grass cloth) on it. We got an estimate to have all the wallpaper removed, the walls texturized and painted. We thought the estimate was a little high. Any ideas how much we could save by taking down the wallpaper ourselves? Our house is 2400 sq ft and the estimate was $5200.

-Mike
 
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