In my last house my daughter's room was covered in dingy old yellow wallpaper. I paid someone to remove it. It was way too overwhelming of a job for me and I had the great excuse that I was 7 months pregnant.
In our current home, I got lucky and only had to deal with wallpaper border in the front room, kitchen, eat in dining area and my son's bedroom. I will not yet go into detail about the fishy bathroom that taunts me everyday...
Those little fish have EYES and they watch me every time I take a shower. They are lucky they are still alive but sooner or later they will be down the toilet in the trash!
Removing wallpaper is not a very fun job but I took a few pictures to show you the process.
While removing the border in different rooms of my house, I realized not all wallpaper is created the same. Some rooms came off super easy and had a glue-like substance underneath. Although afterwards, I had to take a piece of sand paper to get the residue off before I could paint. My son's room was awful and the border was just like a piece of paper stuck to the wall. Let's not mention the 100 stars on the walls that had the same paper-like backing.
There are a few tools necessary for taking off wallpaper or a wallpaper border. You will need a scouring tool that makes small holes in the paper, a good putty knife, and a steamer. All of these can be found at Lowe's.
First you'll take your scouring tool and make small holes in the wallpaper. Then you will want to take a wet rag and go over all of the wallpaper. Let it sit for 1-3 hours and then go over it again. Yup, no fun at all.
Now it's time to make a mess!! You take your wallpaper steamer and go slowly over the paper. I seriously made a huge mess. It may have been helpful to have someone catch the drips but I did not so on the wall it went.
Once you steam a section, you'll be scraping it off with your putty knife. Be careful not to scrape off the existing paint or even some of the dry wall, but it does happen and can be fixed.
Like I mentioned before, you may need to use some fine grit sand paper where your wall paper was. I found this really helpful in getting off all of the glue so the paint would adhere to the wall better.
Now for my little trick. These stars in my son's room just had a paper backing. Stuck on the wall for good. I found a little trick that is super easy but is a little time consuming.
And this is what happens when I try to peel off the star...
Take a wet rag (I used a microfiber cloth) and just start scrubbing at that stinker. Your rag doesn't have to be dripping but just wet all over. All of those stars came off like butter.
Those fish in the bathroom will receive the same treatment. I was pretty proud of myself when our contractor was doing work in that bathroom and told us that those fish will be hard to get off because even his trick didn't work but he didn't know that I already tried to get one off and my little trick worked.
My son's room is still a work in progress, poor little guy. But it looks so much better with those things gone and a fresh coat of Balboa Mist (Benjamin Moore) in there!
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