Removing Wallpaper

Has anyone here managed this successfully or have you ever hired anyone to do this and how much did it cost? We are in the process of buying a home and we are going to have to do some major removal of wallpaper if we do!

Re: Removing Wallpaper

We removed wallpaper in our bedroom when we first moved it. I think it was put up by the original owners. we were teh 3rd owners. supposedly before you put up wallpaper now you have to do something to the walls which makes the wall paper come off much easier. We had 6 people help us remove wallpaper in our bedroom and it was a disaster because it didn't have anything underneath it. Thank god my dad is handy and was able to re-spackle the walls in places. We knew we were eventually taking down the sheetrock to redo it so i wasn't that concerned but it was a nightmare none-the-less. Good luck.

Re: Removing Wallpaper

When we bought our house, the majority of the walls had wallpaper, and those rooms that weren't wallpaper had a wallpaper border!

My husband is pretty handy, so we figured, no biggie, just cosmetics. But it proved ultra-time consuming to get the wallpaper down. It was like melded into the walls and would come off in tiny shreds rather than large strips, despite us steaming it, using all of the products for wallpaper removal on the market, etc.

Because it was so labor intensive, and we were still living and working in the city and wanted to do all the work before we moved in, we hired a professional to strip the wallpaper, fix the walls (which needed work), paint almost the entire house, and remove the paneling in our den and put up sheetrock. I am not sure of the cost, because everything (the painting, sheetrocking, etc.) was rolled in together, but I think most people charge based for labor based on time. So it would probably just depend on how hard it is to get the wallpaper down, how much wallpaper there is, and whether you want the person to do anything else (like smooth out the walls, paint, etc.).

But I've known people who've taken wallpaper down themselves, no problem, so maybe it will be a relatively easy job for you.

Re: Removing Wallpaper

Vinegar and Water in a spray bottle! Saturate the wallpaper, leave on for a good while then with a scraper, remove. Works wonders

Re: Removing Wallpaper

I used fabric softener & warm water. It worked great and smelled good to.

Re: Removing Wallpaper

i did.

there's a little hand held circle shaped wall paper remover thing that you just rub over the wall paper in a circular motion. it starts to rip and lift the wallpaper up (doesn't damage the walls at all).
Then you wet the wallpaper and it can be easily scraped off.

Some other types of wallpaper, esp thick paper, can just be pealed right off.

It all depends.