Horrible woodchip wallpaper

Sutty

We've just moved into a rented house and the decor is a bit rubbish. We've spoken to the landlord and offered to give the house a lick of paint if he springs for the paint, brushes etc. The problem is the hallway has the horrid 1970's woodchip wallpaper on, i believe, plasterboard. What is the best way to remove the woodchip paper and leave us with a surface that can be painted. any help would be gratefully received. thank you

nickj_2

how about moving it'll probably be easier , if not try this , go to your local hire centre and hire a wallpaper steamer and ask if they have a tool to score the paper with , it's like a roller with small spikes on it , this must peirce the paint to allow the steam to get thru to the paste , be careful that you don't scrape the suface of the plasterboard , once off you can wash off the remaining paste from the walls and then paint , if they are too rough you may have to line them

good luck

Sutty

Forgive my ignorance but what's lining???? is that something along the lines of a self levelling filler or am I way off?? Thanks for your advice

itsbeef

Whats wrong with woodchip??

Or am I stuck in a 70's timewarp???

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

A word of warning when using steam strippers on plaster boards. Dont over-moisten the walls or you will end up taking chunks of plaster of and then you will need to get involved with loads of filling & rubbing down etc etc.

Good luck!!!

ps lining is straight forward plain wallpaper. It comes in different grades (thickness's)

lightspeed

Lining is a cheaper alternative to re-skimming or plastering a wall that is not in a good state of order (dents, hairline cracks etc...).

I have just used this method in almost every room of my house and the results are quite impressive.

What to do:

To line walls you need to be a half decent wall paper hanger (it took me about 1 hour to become competant- there are some good sites on the net that will help). Lining paper is what is used to line the walls in the same way as wallpaper is hung on walls. The difference is that lining paper can be painted over and/or papered over, but when painted it provides a finish just like a newly plastered wall at a fraction of the cost.

Firstly you need to strip the woodchip paper using a steamer (£20 from Argos) and a heavy duty scraper. Woodchip is a lot harder to remove than normal wallpaper, especially if painted. This will take some time, but try to remove as much of the paper as possible.

Secondly, allow the walls to dry out and then go over them with sand paper or an electric sander (£13 from B&Q) to remove any raised parts of the wall and remaining bits paper.

Wash down the walls to remove any other debris left from sanding with sugar soap (£3 - 4 from B&Q). You may also need to go around the walls with some filler to smooth out dents and scapes as these will show through lining paper if not sorted prior to lining.

Buy some thick grade (1000 +) lining paper (the thicker the better). Apply the lining paper using wallpaper paste as you would with wallpaper. Lining requires less perfection than wallpapering as there are no patterns to match up. The important thing is to leave at least a 1mm gap between each piece and dont overlap the paper.

Once the room is lined, use some decoraters filler and a gun to carefully fill that 1mm gap using a clean filling knife. Let this dry and then paint. If you can still see the joints between the paper use a lightweight filler to go over them again and then repaint that particular section. Using a Matt paint will give the best results.

If you cant paper you would be better getting in a GOOD plasterer to skim the walls. Dont try and paint over uneven walls with lots of harline cracks as it will easily show up.

Lining per room = <50 pound excluding paint

Plaster per room = approx £150 - 250 excluding paint

Final finish = If done well, both methods will give an excellent finish.

[Deleted User]

To be honest, I wouldn't bother. I'd just paint it over with matt emulsion. You don't know what state the wall behind is in and you don't want to run the risk of having to replaster large areas (at your expense). Woodchip paper is a pain to strip , I have been there done that.

loracan1

At one end of the bathroom when redecorating it became apparent that the old wallpaper had been stuck over woodchip - very thick anaglypta and to be honest we'd never noticed.
After cursing the previous occupiers we started stripping the woodchip off and that's when we discovered exactly why they'd left it. Don't know what sort of 'plasterboard' it is but it seemed to have a paper surface to it, the woodchip paper came off okay but the chips of wood themselves were bonded to the board underneath.
After getting a square foot off in about 12 hours I gave up and we lined it with thick lining paper and papered over that.

The landing has still never been repapered in the 14 years I've lived here:eek:

kittiwoz

Unless you're planning on being in the house a long time and you really can't stand the woodchip I reckon you should just paint over it. Woodchip is a doddle to paint onto. I did my room with a single coat of paint and it's covered it really well and evenly. I actually quite like the slight textured effect on the walls (green) but think that on the ceiling which is white the shadows look much starker so the bumps look much more pronounced. You might find that if you paint the woodchip a slightly darker colour the texturing is less noticeable.

Sutty

Thanks everyone. Unfortunately in places the woodchip paper is falling off anyway. Does anyone know if it is possible to paper directly over it with thick lining paper and paint that? That may be the best option in this case.

lightspeed

Personally i wouldnt do this. I breifly tried to cut out the job of stripping the woodchip paperby putting a small section of lining paper over the woodchip. Unfortunately for us the bobbles of the woochip were still visible.

It will require some hard graft to get the finish that you are after. If you feel that you have not got time or patience i would simply try and paint over the current woodchip. If bits are already coming away i dont see that you have much choice other than to strip it.

Although it isnt the easiest paper to strip, it will only take a few hours to clear the room.

Sutty

What about sanding the wood chip? I want to explore all the options really. I've got nearly a month off so time isn't really an issue. I might just go for it and get stripping following your instructions Lightspeed. I'm just a touch wary of what we'll find underneath as we only rent the house. I'll have to go fairly steady but should be ok.