If you do not like your wallpapers anymore, you certainly have to do something about that. The only thing that you can do is to remove the wallpaper, but sometimes, it just does not work.
But although there may be some troubles, it can work. Just thing about how beautiful the room will be without the wallpaper. This is of a moderate difficulty task.
The first thing that you have to do is to give yourself some room. Remove everything from the wall even things like switches and receptacle plates.
Also remove the furniture from the room. If this is not possible, move it to the center of the room and cover it with plastic sheets or traps.
Most of the new wallpaper is dry strippable. This is what is actually says – the wallpaper could be removed form the wall without using any water or chemicals.
Use a putty knife to pry up the seam at the corner, grab the raise seam and peel it back to a 45 –degree angle.
If it peels off easily you are lucky because you have dry strippable wallpaper. Only pry up the corners of the wallpaper strip and slowly peel it off from the wall.
It has to come out in sheets. But if the wallpaper sticks and tears into small pieces, you have to use water or some chemicals.
Arrange clothes around the floor and cover them with towels. Score the wallpaper with a utility knife or a wallpaper-scoring tool that is available from most hardware stores.
This tool is designed to stop you from cutting too deep or cutting the wallpaper surface of the drywall.
Wet a section of the wallpaper or with a paint roller soaked with in warm water or in water mixed with commercially available wallpaper removers.
Let the moisture soak in and try to peel off the wallpaper. The warm water will soften the glue and the wallpaper will come off.
Peel off the wallpaper by starting from the seam and peel it back slowly at 45 degrees angle. Slide a utility knife under the edge and this should help in peeling off the wallpaper.
Depending on how long the wallpaper has been on the wall and how strong the glue is you may have to wet down the section a few times.
If the section is too stubborn wet it once again, move to another section and come back later. There still will be some stubborn pieces to which you have to come back later.
If there are some pieces that are impossible to be removed sand them with 80 grit paper and after that paint with primer.
When the wallpaper is removed the walls will get dry and you will wash them with a solution of TSP and water.
Such you will remove all the traces of the wallpaper and the glue and you will get a smooth surface for the new wallpaper.
If you will paint the walls, sand them to be certain that there is no more glue left.
It is not easy to remove wallpapers. Plan at least a day to remove the wallpaper from an average room. The walls of the old houses are made from plaster while newer houses are made from drywall.
On plaster walls you can use a lot of water without damaging them but drywall has paper surface and because of that do not completely soak it. If your house is at least 50 years old this means that it is made of drywall.
Do not put wallpaper on unpainted drywall. It is better first to put a coat of primer on the new drywall. Wallpaper that is directly attached to the drywall will peel the paper from the wall.
The things that you will need are sponges or long nap paint roller, screw driver, wallpaper scoring tool or utility knife, wallpaper remover, buckets or paint roller tray, putty knife (4 inches), warm water, garbage bags (to bag up old wallpaper), drop cloths and towels.
Care to know more? Visit www.The-Handyman-Guy.com and grab a copy of my eBook titled "The Handyman Guy Secrets", totally FREE!
The Handyman Guy is the owner of www.The-Handyman-Guy.com , a site dedicated to helping people finding their "inner-handyman". You got one, too!
Was this article helpful to you? Leave a Public Comment or
Question:
This Article has been viewed 2,660
times.
Article added to SearchWarp.com on Saturday, July 21, 2007 View other articles written by The Handyman Guy(2,283)
If you found this article interesting, you may want to check out:
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
