Re: Removing bad wallpaper vs. covering it up?

I feel your pain. I also have had this problem.

Try a steamer after scoring the paper with the paper tiger (as many
holes as possible). You can buy a small one for $50 made by Wagner I
believe. It works but is slow. The draw back of a steamer is that it
can also soften the paint such that some of the paint will come off
also. You will need to spackle and sand the walls in all probability.
On the plus side, a steamer usually works.

I have had mix results with Diff. Sometime it works. Other times it
doesn't. The trick is is score the wallpaper as much as possible. Also
give it plenty of time and multiple sprayings to work.

I would caution against painting over it since you have strip off the
top surface of the paper. The backing can absorb the moisture from the
paint and the result will be bubbling of the paper backing.
Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way.

Good luck. So far I have done 8+ rooms with one hallway to go. Wit
luck, my better half will never want to wallpaper again. I don't mind
hanging it but removing it is too painful.


Gwen Morse wrote:
First of all, thanks for the suggestion to check a locksmith for the
special door locks that I wanted. I have locks that work the way I
wanted since going that route.

I have another question.

I had ugly wallpaper in my eat-in-kitchen. I tore it down. It wasn't
the normal "strip-able" wallpaper, and I only found that out when it
was too late.

I don't really want to cover the resulting wall with wallpaper,
although I will do that if it's absolutely necessary. I really prefer
to just fix up and paint the wall.

The situation is this: There's some sort of weird wall paper backing
that's still glued firmly to the drywall, in weird sheets/patterns. It
didn't come off neatly, nor did it "stay behind" neatly. I've tried
scoring it with a paper tiger and using Diff. This stuff won't come
off. When thoroughly saturated, it reluctantly comes off more like
damp paint than damp paper. It's quite possible that old wallpaper was
imperfectly stripped off and then painted over, leaving the resulting
mess behind. It's actually two walls. One wall is almost all drywall
with just little (stubborn) fingerlength-sized flakes left behind. The
other wall is almost all paper, with handprint-sized gaps down to the
drywall.

A visiting houseguest whose reasonably handy saw it and suggested I
might just...err...mud over the whole wall, but, I'm not sure I could
do that and have it come out as smooth as real drywall. I'm also not
confident I could just take down the old drywall and put up fresh
boards.

What are some options that just require elbow grease and tiny
financial outlays (like, less than $100)? I haven't tried steaming it
yet, but, I don't know that a steamer will work where the score/Diff
process failed.

Gwen

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