Wallpaper Woes
Carrie posted this comment on a post from awhile back about our new home and a tip we had heard about getting wallpaper down: “Hi there, I found your site while Googling for wallpaper removal tips. I realize this is an old blog but I was wondering how the wallpaper removal with Fabreeze worked out for you? I need some tips and was hoping that this one worked. Please let me know. Thanks!”
Well, Carrie, as it turns out, most of the “wallpaper” tips we heard seemed to be old wives tales. We tried soap and water, DIF, Fabreeze, the roller that perforates the walls to allow liquid to soak in … none of it worked magic. My husband and I worked eight hours on one part of one wall and barely made progress.
Just last week we hired a friend from church who spent 13 hours using a steamer and got all the wallpaper down. It cost us a pretty penny ($375) but we felt we ran out of options. With both of us working full-time and my husband’s grad school load, we felt we had no other choice.
My husband will sand the walls down and prep them for painting, so at least we won’t have to pay anything additional to finish the job.
But what a pain! I hope we never have to deal with wallpaper again.
Comments
Well that doesn't sound too great. LOL I went to our local hardware store today and bought a thing of DIF. Hopefully it works but that doesn't sound too promising either. Thankfully it's just a small border at waist height so I'm hoping it won't be too bad. Thanks again!
Posted by: Carrie | October 2, 2006 06:51 PM
Hot water and vinegar mixture works just as good as anything you can buy in a store. It's tough work no matter what you do, and you'll get frustrated. But spray hot water and vinegar on the wallpaper, let it sink in for a few minute, then scrape until your arm hurts.
Posted by: Eric | October 23, 2006 11:37 AM
Remember two things about wallpaper the only diffence between wallpaper that will come down and one that wont is if it can be saturated or not If it can absorb water then you just need to keep spraying til it soaks in if it cant absorb then you peel off the vinyl coated layer and soak the backing that is left on the wall or just email me and hire us to do it!
Posted by: Cheryl DeBuc | October 26, 2006 08:07 PM