Removing 70s wallpaper - how easy/difficult?

bluedrop

Hi all,
I'm buying a house with 1930s with heavy textured wallpaper....I am considering DIY to remove it. Planning to buy/rent a steamer...

Can someone please tell me if I am being crazy or is it doable? I've never done any DIY and this is my first home. How long should I expect it to take if I am work on it all by myself?

I've been quoted £300 -£800 for this job !

Mojisola

The problem won't be getting the paper off but how good the plaster is underneath.

Is the house 1930s or 1970s? If the plaster is from the 70s, it won't be so much of a problem. If it's 1930s plaster, a lot could come away and you could find yourself looking for a plasterer.

It's worth checking youtube for videos of DIY - be selective, some are just trying to sell you things.

LEJC

The house we have just renovated was full of the stuff...

It really depends what type you have...some of the textured and flocked that we had came off quite easilybut you need to do it in two goes...its basically about pulling off the first layer and then soaking or steaming the lower layer off.

Wood chip escpecially if its got several coats of paint on is a little more timeconsuming and we found it worked well to score the paper to allow the steam to penetrate before lots of hard work scraping it!

We hired an industrial stripper over a bank holiday on weekend rates from a hire shop and basically constantly had it working the whole weekend!...and the following weekend too.

Some of the really stubborn stuff was still very difficult to get off and it really is just a case of methodically working your way through it.

I would certainly say if its a job you are perpared to have a go at....its reasonably easy,maybe a little repetative,but certainly doable with just a limited knowledge
I can quite believe the quotes youve had...they probably reflect the time involved rather than any great skill...and to be honest if money is tight or you might be better saving it for jobs later that do require skill ie plastering that you wont be able to do yourself
All in I think we paid about £100 for the hire of the wallpaper stripper ...you could also look at buying one but make sure it capable of doing the job.

Once its off its then a case of seeing what your walls are like underneath...ours did need skimming but thats mainly due to the fact that we just wanted to paint rather than wallpaper...so it may be that if you want to wallpaper over again a good lining paper under your chosen wallpaper will be all you need.

bluedrop

Mojisola wrote: »

The problem won't be getting the paper off but how good the plaster is underneath.

Is the house 1930s or 1970s? If the plaster is from the 70s, it won't be so much of a problem. If it's 1930s plaster, a lot could come away and you could find yourself looking for a plasterer.

It's worth checking youtube for videos of DIY - be selective, some are just trying to sell you things.

Its a 1930s house. But we were told that the wall paper is 70s - cant count on what the EA said though....

bugslet

Budgetary constraints meant that I tackled the same problem earlier this year. Never decorated before and bought a standard wallpaper stripper ( doing the rest of the house so worth it to me) and as LEJC said, score it first and it should be straightforward. My walls weren't too bad and I papered and painted myself. Won't win any awards, but for a first attempt, I'm rather pleased with little self.:o

helenut

We just went through the same in our house. As soon as we got the keys I started ripping the stuff off, like another poster said some bits were really easy and some bits were really hard to get off.

We ended up peeling off the top textured layer with a scraper than using a steamer on the layers underneath and scraping them away. The plaster underneath was very weak and we made a few huge holes so ended up having our living room and kitchen re-plastered. The bedrooms we ended up putting up lining paper and then painted over it as we couldn't afford a plasterer for those rooms at the time. The hallway we were going to put wallpaper up anyway (non-textured!) so it didn't matter so much. We just filled up the holes, put some lining paper up and it was fine.

It did take FOREVER to do though. Is it just one room you're doing or the whole house? We did the whole house and I never ever want to do anything like it again :P As soon as we finished I sold the steamer immediately on ebay as I didn't want to look it at again!

bluedrop

helenut wrote: »

It did take FOREVER to do though. Is it just one room you're doing or the whole house? We did the whole house and I never ever want to do anything like it again :P As soon as we finished I sold the steamer immediately on ebay as I didn't want to look it at again!

Unfortunately, its the whole house for us too

Do you think I will be able to complete this in 2 full days?

LisaLou1982

Youll be fine OP - wallpaper stripping isnt a hard job. It is however, repetitive. But you will save a lot by doing it yourself!!

Score the wallpaper and then wet it - it will come off. I always find it useful to have a spray bottle of water next to me so i can keep spraying if any little bits get dry.

Oh, and make sure you have plenty of rubble sacks to put the wallpaper in as it will go sticky once its wet and off the wall!

LEJC

bluedrop wrote: »

Unfortunately, its the whole house for us too

Do you think I will be able to complete this in 2 full days?

ours was the whole house...its quite a big ask to think you may be able to complete it in 2 days...a lot depends on the type and number of walls you need to strip.

Baically if thers wallpaper in the hall stairs and landing area..this will probably be more difficult than a 4 walled standard room.
Also some rooms may be easier than others and the wallpaper come off much easier....our living room came off in half a day,our 3rd box room bedroom which was a quarter of the size of the living room actually took 2 days,because it was really stuck hard!

Your quotes might be a bit reflective on how long someone thinks the job should take...based on £125 per day which isnt unreasonable,one guesses 2and a half days...the other possibly up to a week.

Personally if its just you working for 2 I think it might be difficult to strip a whole house...maybe if you have a few friends helping you could get it done in a weekend!

LandyAndy

I've never bothered with a steamer. A bucket of warm water and a sponge to get the paper good and wet has always worked.

Scoring is a good idea as is taking it off in two layers.

Stripping wallpaper is a very satisfying thing to do.

Have plenty of black bags handy.

Mojisola

bluedrop wrote: »

Its a 1930s house. But we were told that the wall paper is 70s - cant count on what the EA said though....

LandyAndy wrote: »

I've never bothered with a steamer. A bucket of warm water and a sponge to get the paper good and wet has always worked.

Scoring is a good idea as is taking it off in two layers.

Stripping wallpaper is a very satisfying thing to do.

Have plenty of black bags handy.

We've always used the same method as Andy.

What you need to be careful about is that the plaster underneath the paper is maybe 80 years old. We have a similar age house and the original plaster has been quite fragile in places.