Last November I renovated my stepmother’s bathroom. I felt privileged for her to ask me to complete this task, and was excited to get started. We were working with a very large bathroom with many different angles, and someone wallpapered straight onto the drywall about two decades ago. This was not something I thought about when I agreed to redo the space. After spending hours researching the Internet and trying multiple home remedies, I went and bought a scorer. I knew there was no other way of getting this wallpaper off.
Scorers work great, but without patience, they can tear up the drywall quickly, which will lead to re-patching and sanding before painting over. I was dealing with the latter. The ceilings in this bathroom were 20 feet tall, which was another thing I did not consider when undertaking this project. I knew there was no way I could reach the top of these walls, so again, another solution had to researched.
That is when I heard a gem of a DIY tip from a fellow friend for removing old wallpaper without tearing up the walls. The tip is super easy to do, cheap, and after hearing, made complete sense to me.
Purchase the cheapest liquid laundry detergent, and then mix equal parts of water and liquid laundry detergent. I used hot water for the mix, my friend did not specify this, but hot water never hurts when removing anything with adhesive.
Using either a spray bottle or a paint roller (if you are not scared to get a little messy) apply the solution to the paper. The spray bottle will wear your hand out quickly. If you are able to peel the top layer of the wallpaper off to only the fuzzy paper backing layer, do it. After the solution soaked for about 25 minutes, the paper peeled right off the wall like magic. I was dumbfound and utterly ecstatic. I only wish I had known about this before I used the scorer on 85 percent of the walls.
Always remember to clean your walls very well before you paint over them. If the drywall has wallpaper glued right on top of it, you will most likely not be able to completely get rid of the glue from the drywall. The longer the wallpaper is on the drywall, the longer the wallpaper paste has soaked into the top layer of the drywall.
If this is the case you can purchase oil based Kilz. I was amazed with this tip as well. The paint guy referred me to this; he stated this is what professional wallpaper company’s use for this problem. Without it, my paint was bubbling up and drying flaky.
Sometimes, depending on the amount of wallpaper paste used, re-skimming the walls or an area of a wall might be necessary. Re-skimming consists of using a trowel and drywall mud to re-mud an area. Go over the area with a light coat of drywall mud, and follow up with light sanding using a medium to higher grit sandpaper for a smooth surface. Do more than one skim coat if needed.
Once I primed the walls with one coat of oil-based Kilz, the paint went on perfect. I am currently taking wallpaper down in the hallway of my home, but this time I knew from the start how to remove it without tearing up the drywall.
Taking down wallpaper is always going to be time consuming and messy; however, this method of taking down wallpaper has by far been the easiest. Surely, this wallpaper removal solution can spare someone else of their sanity as it has with me. Happy wallpapering!