I started removing the wallpaper in my kitchen last night and ran into a mess. I tore off the top layer of paper and was left with all the glue on the wall. After I soaked scraped the glue I found a few layers of paint and then plaster under that. It was very rough getting through the paint and I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions. How do I get through the layers of paint? Thinking of sanding the paint as smooth as possible and then painting over but I really want to do it right.
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It may be smelly-but vinegar works. Take a bucket of 1 quart water. to either full strength of 1-cup or more vinegar. Wet the wall in small areas at a time, allowing it to soak into the paste, and then using the scraper, it should remove easier. You may need to use vinegar at full strength. When this is done… lightly sand the
wall..Now to re apply paper… sizing the wall is a must. We think this is why you have sticky reside it was not sized the first time. What is the backing..drywall-was it primed before the paper was hung the first time? Don’t sound like it. NEVER put up wallpaper to a new surface without primer paint and then using wall paper sizing. We have over the years never had a problem when we done this. When we bought the farm house it has layers of wall paper, some as many as 8 to ten layers counted. All using that old homemade wheat-paste.
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My mom brought over some DIF and we were able to get most of the wallpaper off last night. A little bit of scraping but the paper was so old that most of it came off easily. Now tonight I have to move out the frig and get to the paper behind there.
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The thing to remember with removing wallpaper is to leave the solution on for at least 15 minutes, what I did wrong was to start scraping almost immediately and of course, I did not do such a good job. You can use plain old fabric softener and/or vinegar solution and do a good job with it if you leave it on for a period of time.