House Wars: Wallpaper sucks!

I told you in my last post, that the next post would be about wallpaper removal. I don't want to be a liar, so I will in fact write about it, even though I have other things I'd rather be writing about. The reason I don't want to write about wallpaper removal, is that it sucks, plain and simple. Don't do it! If you're looking to buy a house that has wallpaper, look for another house. If you already bought the house, burn it down! Ok, perhaps I'm being too dramatic. You can still buy a house with wallpaper and you can even get rid of the wallpaper, but before you do it, read this post!

Before setting off on this seemingly easy task, I did a fair amount of research. I read articles from the "pros" and watched countless YouTube videos, which led me to believe that the job would take roughly 2 minutes and 30 seconds per wall. There was a lot of conflicting information on the best way to actually remove the wallpaper. There are two different methods that are recommended and many variations of those methods. Method One: Chemical spray. The way this works is, you use a wallpaper scoring tool to make lots of tiny holes in the wallpaper and spray the wall with a wallpaper removal solution (you can buy several different kinds, or make at home). You let the solution soak into the wallpaper for a bit and then scrape it off painlessly (yeah right!). Method two: Steam. For this method you need to rent a wallpaper steamer (roughly $30 a day) from a tool rental company or hardware store. You fill the steamer up with water, let it heat up and run it over the wallpaper and voila the wallpaper jumps off the walls (with a little help from a wall scraper, of course).

I started off with method one. My wonderfully helpful wife went to the hardware store for me and picked up a spray bottle of "world's best wallpaper remover". I followed the instructions to the letter and went to scrape off the wallpaper after the appropriate amount of soaking time. I tried three different scrapers that I had in the house and none of them were able to scrape more than a tiny amount off. I sprayed again and scraped again. I found that despite the instructions to wait 5-15 minutes before scraping, the only way it worked is if you scraped immediately after spraying, while the wallpaper was very wet. Even with this method, it took about a half hour to scrape a 1SF space. Not impressive. I tried another brand of wallpaper removal (how can you get better than world's best?) which did no better.

On to method two. I rented a wallpaper steamer from an evil big box hardware store (not kidding, they are the devil and their name rhymes with Home Depot) for four hours, which should've been enough to do the whole house if the YouTube videos were to be believed. I filled it up to the fill line with water, turned it on and waited and waited and waited. I left for a half hour and when I came back it was making noises like it was ready, so I started holding it up to the wall, but no steam was coming out. Another 10 minutes of waiting and finally it was actually ready to use. I started with a one foot section and held the steamer over it for 10 seconds (you don't want to hold it up too long, or it will ruin the drywall). I tried scraping and only a small amount came off. Another 20 seconds of steaming and I was able to scrape a whole foot off at once. OOPS, I forgot something important. Before doing the steaming, I peeled the top layer of the wallpaper off by hand. The steam doesn't always go through both layers, so it's best to take off the easy layer and use the steam for the glue layer (if you have one, if you don't, you don't need no steamer or chemicals (pretend I wrote this at the beginning of the post)

In four hours with the steamer, I got the wallpaper off the majority of the walls going up the stairs to the second floor. I went back and rented the steamer for a week. In spite of being too busy at work and sick I managed to get 95% of the wallpaper in the house removed and only got charged for returning the steamer a couple hours late. At this point, all I need to do is clean the walls, patch and sand them before I can begin to paint. Doesn't sound so bad, right? I may not have mentioned that steam is hot as ... steam! and it has a way of burning you even when you follow the instructions perfectly. I only got one really bad burn, but it was bad and it hurt like heck. Then comes the worst part, the mess. The top layer isn't too bad, you can roll it up and throw it out. The glue layer, however, is a royal pain. It comes off in small, wet pieces, which stick to everything, harden and makes a huge mess. Fortunately, my wife is not a slob like me and she cleaned up most of the mess, until I banned her from working there, b/c of allergies (more on that later). One of the cool things about this job was seeing what was under the paper, in several places you can see the writing on the drywall from when they built the house, instructing them to cover it with wallpaper. I wanted to cross it off and write "paint, for God's sake, you idiots!" in the hopes that they might somehow travel through time and see that and decide to listen, or something like that.

Conclusion: It may be smarter to replace the drywall, rather than remove the wallpaper. Barring that, I'd suggest hiring someone (not necessarily a professional, just a helper) and having them deal with the steaming and scraping. If you must do it yourself, go to the closest convenience store and buy yourself a 6-pack of beer, you're going to need it. Plus, alcohol and dangerous equipment are proven to work well together.

As I always say, why finish one job when you can do a hundred jobs half way? With that in mind, I started another project, before cleaning the walls. The next project is carpet removal, which can't possibly be as bad as wallpaper right? Wrong. Wait for it, I'll post the details at some point. I'm thinking I should include the time the project took and the cost in each post. I will try to do that at some point, if I can find the time.

Now for some pictures: