There has been a lot of focus on our garden of late and during the holidays I felt it was time to do a bit more internally.
There are two types of wallpaper that have been used in the house - a thin lightly textured wallpaper which comes off easily (spare room, bathroom, kitchen) and a heavy thick cross-hatched wallpaper. Both have been painted over in some cases and not in others.
We decided we would tackle the hallway next. It is a part of the house that you use so often so would be nice to extend from the renovated bathroom and around to the renovated spare room. Most people don’t go into our bedroom or the study though we’ll probably do the study next. The kitchen and lounge are going to be our major project but that is going to take a lot of work and budget so we’re working up to those (though I am keen to be able to say “purple walls! be gone!”).
The hallway has the heavy paper, though it wasn’t painted over like the lounge was. We weren’t sure how difficult it would be to remove so decided to try out a wallpaper steamer rather than our other method. In short: the steamer is not worth it. It’s hot, messy and gives you a sore arm! After a few hours of steaming, we returned the steamer and began to be gung ho with the vinegar-water mixture and the scraper.
It takes longer than you expect but the key is to not skimp on the vinegar (even though it might stink a bit and seem like overkill) and let it really soak into the paper before you pull/scrape. It’s now ready for plastering, though we need to find a plasterer who isn’t either overly expensive or not detail-oriented (enough said!). Any recommendations are very welcomed!