Wallpaper removal is fairly easy, but quite messy. There are two ways to remove it, aside from ripping it off the walls with your bare hands. Don't laugh... I have seen wallpaper that would fall from the walls with a sideways glance. However, if yours was that easy, you would be practicing an icy stare instead of asking in the TFS forums.
All kidding aside (never), if you can get under a corner of the paper, try to tear it off dry. If it works, it will save you loads of work. In some cases, everything but a small amount of paste residue will remain. You can clean it off with some wallpaper stripper and a sponge. In other cases, the facing (on vinyl papers, primarily) will come off and leave a paper backing stuck on the wall. This backing will be easy to get off with method 2.
METHOD 1: The first method is using a wallpaper steamer, a piece of equipment that can be rented. It sends steam through a hose to a flat metal plate similar to an iron. Pressing this plate on the wall forces steam into the wallpaper, which softens the paper and paste. This allows you to strip the paper with a wide putty knife.
This method harkens to the days of plaster walls, still in abundance in older homes but a relative rarity in the last twenty or thirty years. Unfortunately, aggressive steaming can damage paper-faced wallboards, especially if the wallboard wasn't fully sealed prior to wallpapering. In new construction, walls that are going to be papered are often not primed with paint, but just coated with sizing. The sizing seals enough to allow the wallpaper to stick, but offers little protection to the walls otherwise. This leads us to Method 2...
METHOD 2: The second method involves the use of a chemical agent that is added to hot water. This chemical is an enzyme that soaks into the paper and dissolves the paste. It takes a little longer than the steamer, but does a fine job and is less damaging to the walls. The trick is to allow the chemical to do its work, and not to rush into scraping too soon. The paper should be kept wet with the chemical until the paper is loose enough to scrape off EASILY.
The wallpaper stripper is applied with a sprayer, either a hand-held trigger spray type for very small jobs or a pump-type pressurized garden sprayer for entire rooms. Cover the floors with plastic tarps under newspapers to absorb the excess spray and collect the old paper. As waste accumulates, throw away a few layers of newspaper and put additional paper on the tarps.
If the original paper is a non-porous vinyl, you may have to rip the vinyl face from the wall before using either removal method, because neither the steam nor the chemical stripper will easily penetrate the vinyl.
Check this stuff out ... https://www.wallwik.com/
"Almost as simple as peeling a banana."
Feb 19, 2009 @ 13:45:05
Jinks you are really an authority on this subject-----
Actually, the easiest way is to have a guy do it---a shirtless hulk
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