How to strip wood chip wallpaper?

Dalmation

I'm moving into a new house next week. All the bedroom walls are covered in wood chip wallpaper!
I've been looking on the web to find the best way to strip them but there's lots of conflicting advice.
Can anyone help please?
Thanks

SailorSam

A bucket of warm water and a sponge.

Mind_the_Gap

Warm water and a sponge normally works for ordinary wallpaper, but woodchip often needs something more powerful. For some reason, when people applied the stuff (in the 70s!) they believed it was so wonderful that nobody would ever want to remove it - so they stuck it down with whale-strength glue or something.

Anyway, I suggest the judicious use of a steam stripper, otherwise it can take days. Weeks, even, to get one wall done properly. The only danger with these is that they can damage the plaster if applied directly to it - but if you use it on top of the paper only, and don't leave it on any one area for longer than is needed to loosen the paper, it should be OK.

greyteam1959

Score the paper first, wet it well,leave it for a while & it will come off dead easy.
Don't go mad with the scoring & damage the plaster underneath !!
HTH

force_ten

wood chip wallpaper covered in years and years of thickly applied vinyl silk emulsion is a nightmare

We had it in our last house and it was days and days of hard work to get it off

Take the

Score the paper first, wet it well,leave it for a while & it will come off dead easy

and the

wood chip wallpaper covered in years and years of thickly applied vinyl silk emulsion is a nightmare

and if you get somewhere in between you are lucky, we used an orbital wallpaper scorer and a heavy duty steam stripper and lots of hard work with all the widows open to let out the gallons of steam we were throwing at the walls

Dalmation

force_ten wrote: »

wood chip wallpaper covered in years and years of thickly applied vinyl silk emulsion is a nightmare

We had it in our last house and it was days and days of hard work to get it off

Take the

and the

and if you get somewhere in between you are lucky, we used an orbital wallpaper scorer and a heavy duty steam stripper and lots of hard work with all the widows open to let out the gallons of steam we were throwing at the walls

Thanks for all the replies. Did you find the orbital scorer helped? Is it worth me buying one?

DRP

+1 for scoring and steam.

We did our large lounge diner knock through and it was hell tbh. The ceilings were a killer...

Mind_the_Gap

Dalmation wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies. Did you find the orbital scorer helped? Is it worth me buying one?

No, the orbital ones are hopeless, I would recommend the sort which look like a Flintstones weapon - I'll find a photo.

It's the thing which has a longish handle and a spiked cylinder on the end:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wallpaper+scoring+tools&espv=210&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=aHo0U--9OsqthQekhoBw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1304&bih=664#facrc=_&imgdii=-J9u-ynunf4jdM%3A%3BzAa6gXrUmpeXxM%3B-J9u-ynunf4jdM%3A&imgrc=-J9u-ynunf4jdM%253A%3BFxyl_fpsjV3E0M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.levelsupply.com%252Fimages%252Fproduct%25255C1%25255C4%25255CMarshalltown-14115-Wallpaper-Scoring-Tool.jpg.ashx%253Fwidth%253D200%2526height%253D200%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.levelsupply.com%252Fpd32727%252Fmarshalltown-14115-wallpaper-scoring-tool%3B150%3B150

I got one from the Dulux Decorator Centre - but they are a bit vicious (the tool I mean not the staff). They said they had to stop selling them once because the local gangs bought the entire stock and roamed round the town inflicting damage on each other with them. But they are very good for scoring wallpaper without scratching the plaster.

Candy53

It is a nightmare getting that stuff off. Our whole house was covered in it when we moved in.

We tried soaking it, but it stuck like glue, so we bought a steamer, and it came off quite easily, thank goodness.



Candy

lstar337

Score, steam, and lots of patience!

onomatopoeia99

In my house every wall was covered with woodchip and some ceilings (the ones they didn't put artex on). The wallpaper had multiple layers of shiny emulsion on top. Scoring, spiked rollers etc were no help in getting the steamer to work, all it did was make the paint a bit flexible.

I ended up scraping the walls with the wallpaper stripper (this is hard work) to take the top layer of the paper off. This causes the chips to fly around the room like shrapnel, and leaves a woody pulp layer underneath. This very absorbent and steams off easily, although the areas where the wallpaper had been glued (yes, really) to the walls rather than pasted required further attention.

If the walls were covered in woodchip it's usually because the plaster underneath is rubbish, so figure on re-plastering once you're done.

I only have the second bedroom and lounge left to strip and replaster now, but giving myself a break before tackling them!