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Is it time to finally say good bye to the god awful wallpaper that\'s covering your walls? If you want to save some money you could remove the old wallpaper yourself instead of paying for it. You won\'t know how hard—-or easy—removing that old wallpaper will be until you try.
Here are a few guidelines to help you tackle the job.
How-To Steps
Step 1:
Move furniture away from the walls and cover the floor with drop cloths.
Step 2:
Pick a corner or an edge of the wallpaper and try to peel it off using your hands, a putty knife or a wallpaper scraper. Some papers are designed to simply peel off.
Step 3:
If the paper doesn\'t peel off, or if the pattern comes away but the backing remains, score the paper lightly using a razor blade or a wallpaper-scoring tool. Be careful not to cut into the drywall or plaster underneath.
Step 4:
Apply plain water, water mixed with a mild household soap, or a commercial solution of a wallpaper remover to the wall using a paint roller, squirt gun or large sponge. Saturate the wall several times if necessary; the paper will absorb the water until the glue begins to loosen.
Step 5:
Alternatively, rent or buy a wallpaper steamer. Take care–—steamers get very hot.
Step 6:
Try again to pull the paper off with your hands. You might still have to use a scraper or putty knife, however.
Step 7:
Wash away as much of the glue as possible, until you are down to the original painted or primed wall. You might have to use a heavy-duty scouring pad. Wait until the wall is dry and use sandpaper to sand off what remains of the paper, backing or glue.
Some steps to know how to remove wallpaper
· Don\'t fret if you mark up the wall with cuts and dings. You can always sand it, plaster it, re-paint, or put up new wallpaper.
· Try using vinegar instead of a chemical solution, it is less toxic and works equally well or better than the commercial alternative. A 20% solution is very strong, but as little as a cup in a gallon of hot water makes a big difference.
· Fabric softener works amazingly well. Get the cheapest store brand and the lightest or unscented fabric softener. Scented fabric softener gets to be a lot in a small space.
· Sometimes at first all that peels off is the vinyl coating. Soak down the remaining felt-paper with your choice of remover, wait, wet again, and use your scraper tool to zip it off.
· It will take three times as long as you anticipate, and about six times as much DIF. Try the other alternatives to the DIF, as it\'s very expensive.
· Lessons learned from "the moron" (also known as "the previous homeowner"): Never paint over plastic moldings, never paint over wallpaper, and never wallpaper over wallpaper. Paint before putting wallpaper over drywall. It\'s much harder to take down wallpaper from unpainted drywall and leaves a very sorry result.
· Plastic moldings will, in all likelihood, be destroyed in this process.
· Scoring wallpaper does nothing to help this process. (except on vinyl wallpaper)
How to remove wallpaper >
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