Foxesecho

wall paper without it looking like the walls have been attacked by a nursery of 4 year olds .

I decided to have a go and remove the wall paper off the toilet walls. After a while I realised the brown paper was not a lining paper, but the actual wall . We have a whole house to do but I am worried about the mess and what to do once the paper is off .

I can now see why the wall paper is circa 1970

How did others overcome this dilema??

Thanks for your help

nelsonpom

Painted over and then re-wallpapered

BEVS

Wallpaper steamer might do it.

Fooferfish

Be carefull its not the old style GIB board, we did a whole house with this on it and once we had soaked the lounge wall, we tried to get the wall paper off and the rest of the what we thought was backing paper came off with the paper, and left holes and rough patches.

You can use a garden plant sprayer, fill half with washing up liquid and half with hot water and spray onto walls and let soak, the wahing up liquid helps the water stay on the paper and the hot water will soak in better.

Be careful with a steamer as if its the old style GIB and they may not have sized the walls first back then, the whold lot will come off and you will end up skimming the walls with GIB mix.

Foxesecho

I think it is the old GIB board. The house is about 40 years old and I dont think the walls have been sized. I used a steamer and plain water and both pulled the brown GIB off. Thankfully there are no holes in the walls, but I feel the whole house is like this . It makes me feel we should just leave it and live with the grotty wallpaper

MattandJax

for delicate walls like this, i find its best to score the wallpaper first (use edge of wallpaper stripper) then soak the paper with warm water using a sponge a few times before attempting to scrape off. takes a bit longer than a steamer, but will leave the plaster underneath intact.

otherwise, use a steamer, but dont hold it tight against the wall and not for too long
jax

zoexr

I always use sugar soap (get it in DIY shops) I find its much better than just warm water. Scoring is a pain, but worth it.
Good luck!

Heavenlyscent

Use a wall paper stripper, which steams the wall paper and helps to bring off the wall paper more easily, but slice the top wallpaper with a knife first and it will just peel away with the steam.

Foxesecho

One of the problems is that the walls in some NZ house are not plastered like they are in the uk . The wall paper has been put straight onto the GIB (plaster) board and is stuck like s**t to a blanket .

Thanks for suggestions

BEVS

Probably right then. Our house is 35+ years old. Thankfully the wallpaper isn't too awful but I;d like to see the back of it too. We tried painting over some of it but that looks awful IMO. Shows up everything.

Perhaps I'll forget the steamer idea then on the back of this thread..



I tried a bit in our back bedroom and can see it's the same.

I dunno Foxesecho. I suppose it's either papering over the wallpaer. I've found that this has happened in this house , with 2 or 3 layers underneath.

Or it's get rid of all wallpaper and gib skim

RobClubley

I bought a steamer - even though they are 5x the price as they are in B&Q.
Works well but it's easy to damage that paper layer on the old style GIB.

Fooferfish

If you cant get it off as the old gib comes with it, get some block out paint, like Zinnser sealer, and seal the paper and paint over it, or buy some lining paper and cover the walss length ways, we had to skim a whole house after the Gib came away with the paper, lucky for us the owner payed the extra.