How on earth do you take off a wallpaper border?

ymmv

posted: 3/15/2010 at 2:05 PM

Quote from mamaofthree on 3/15/2010 at 2:01 PM:

We bought an old house that had ugly wallpaper borders in every room. We found that there were 3 layers, all improperly applied, the last of which was stuck directly to the plaster. Grrr. After much swearing and use of all kinds of gross chemicals and hours of holding up sanders and rented industrial steamer thingies, we ended up hiring someone to come in and sand the sh*t out of the walls. Worked great!

wallpaper is just evil. when i mentioned a scraper above, i meant something like this:

knifey

posted: 3/15/2010 at 2:13 PM

I skimmed the thread and didn't see anyone mention this (but maybe I missed it)...but liquid fabric softener works miracles. Mix it w/water, spray on, leave for a few minutes...it scrapes and peels right off! Good luck!

wannaberunner

I look my best blurry!

posted: 3/15/2010 at 7:57 PM
modified: 3/15/2010 at 7:59 PM

I used hot water, as hot as I could tolerate. I used a spackling scraper to get the edges started. When that wasn't enough I used the scoring tool. When THAT didn't work I used my fingernails and picked it off little by little. I was unstoppable! I bought a house several years ago with borders and wallpaper with pink and blue country print in every (freakin') room. I spent the entire 7 years I lived there removing it. Good news. I got it all off and painted all the rooms beautiful earth tones. Actually renovated the whole entire house and then promptly sold it to the first people that looked at it before it was officially on the market. Worth every minute of effort to get that crappy paper down. New house? NO WALLPAPER- EVER!!!!

JCEntRunner

posted: 3/15/2010 at 9:52 PM

As a former painter I would suggest experimenting with some of the ideas already mentioned. Start with your scoring tool (aka paper tiger) and some wallpaper remover and work your way up from there. A lot of it really depends how they treated the wall before they put the paper on. If they didn't do any prep work whatsoever your only option may be to just rip it off the wall and patch the wall back up with drywall mud. Unfortunately that is a ton of work and definitely a tool of last resort (or time to call in the professional). Whatever you end up doing, rest assured that there aren't really any short cuts...it's just going to take some time. There is a definitely a reason why I will never put up wallpaper in any home I ever own! One other tip, once the paper is off, make sure you get all the glue off or your latex paint will mix with the glue and turn into a nasty globular paste. I usually ended up just priming over the formerly papered area with an oil base primer (which won't combine with the glue) so I didn't have to be so careful about removing every last bit of glue.

huskerboiler

posted: 3/16/2010 at 10:46 AM

Quote from knifey on 3/15/2010 at 2:13 PM:

I skimmed the thread and didn't see anyone mention this (but maybe I missed it)...but liquid fabric softener works miracles. Mix it w/water, spray on, leave for a few minutes...it scrapes and peels right off! Good luck!

I have tried this several times and it works better than any store bought chemical. I have found that if you score the paper with the tool shown above, use very hot water and a mixture of about 33% softener it works the best.

How on earth do you take off a wallpaper border? (Read 566 times)