In this video I show you how I removed stuck coated wallpaper in an old house rehab.
This month I’m flipping a rental unit by myself in a three-week window. There’s not a lot time to pull this off. In three rooms wallpaper needed to either come down or get covered up fast.
The easy sections of wallpaper in this old house came down just by washing the walls with water using a paint roller. The wallpaper peeled off easily at the seams in large strips.
Wallpaper in the kitchen was coated and therefore resistant to a surface wash.
I scored sections of the wallpaper in the kitchen with a razor blade. Other people find an inexpensive wallpaper scoring tool more helpful like the product linked below:
Score the toughest sections of wallpaper and apply a spray-on or wash-on wallpaper stripper to get to the glue. Inexpensive spray bottle or concentrate wallpaper stripper mixes can be found below. I used the Zinsser wallpaper stripper. You’ll see other highly rated solutions found online such as WP Chomp. I’ve also seen people use Giddyup Formula 409 or a simple homemade batch of vinegar and hot water.
Removing tough sections of wallpaper is a tedious and time-consuming task so make sure you’re aware of what you might be getting yourself in to. I was only able to fully remove the wallpaper from one room in this house. In the kitchen and living room I decided to paint over the wallpaper.
In a seperate video I’ll show you the results of painting over wallpaper.
For more information on this rental flip and others check out the house blog.