When you are looking to paint the interior walls of one of the rooms of your home, and you find yourself face to face with wallpaper that you may have been responsible for installing, the question that comes up is if you should remove the wallpaper or paint over it.
Both of these tactics have their positives, and if the wallpaper is simple enough to remove it, it may be well worth just going ahead and doing it.
Of course, having some techniques available to you while you are working on removing wallpaper is a handy and useful thing to consider.
With that being the case, here are five tips and tricks for removing wallpaper in Prairieville, LA.
1. Check First If It Is Wallpaper That Is Easy To Remove
Before you go through all of the trouble of using moisture and tools to peel away at wallpaper that is stubbornly sticking to your walls, you may want to take the time to find out if it is stubborn at all.
Some wallpapers are designed to be easily removed from the walls and require minimal effort to do so.
To find out if you have such a wallpaper, you’re going to want to find a seam somewhere along the top of the wall and just sort of inserting a putty knife underneath the seam and try to lift it and pull downward.
An easy to remove wallpaper will, well, easily come off or come off with little effort.
If it turns out that your wallpaper is easy to remove, you won’t have to work as hard to get the wallpaper off of your home interior walls.
2. Check For Depth
Though you are undoubtedly aware that there is the possibility that the wallpaper on your wall may not be the only layer of wallpaper there, did you know that sometimes the history of your wallpaper is such that you have three or four layers of wallpaper there?
This, unfortunately, happens when people look at the wallpaper on the wall and think they’ll just cover it with new paper rather than removing prior to applying new wallpaper.
If you take a standard putty knife, you can find out about how many layers of wallpaper you really have between yourself and the wall — and change your strategy accordingly.
3. Spritz With Water To Moisten
One way to make sure that you will get the wallpaper to come off of your wall is to moisten it first.
You can get a good spray bottle and fill it with either just straight water or a combination of fabric softener and dish soap, you can get the wallpaper moist and ready to be released from the wall and that much closer to having a wall ready to paint.
4. Use A Standard Clothing Steamer Or Rent A Wallpaper Steamer
If you have a clothing steamer already, you are in luck — you can generally use such a steamer to get the wallpaper off of the wall without too much of a problem.
If you don’t have a clothing steamer or want to get something that’s more powerful, you can also rent a steamer that’s meant for wallpaper and have at it — it should get the wallpaper off much more efficiently than just about any other method.
5. Pierce The Wallpaper If It Is Easily Cleaned
If your wallpaper is so easy to clean that all you have to do is to wipe it with a wet cloth, you probably have an easily cleaned wallpaper, and that means that just trying to spray it or steam it will not be very efficient.
The best way to get past this problem is that you’re going to have to pierce the surface of the wallpaper with a wallpaper scoring tool — but not too hard as it may damage your wall.
This will allow for the steam or moist mixture to get under the surface of the wallpaper and, therefore, more easy to remove.
Prestigious Painting is a licensed and insured professional painting contractor that serves customers in the Greater Baton Rouge Area. This area includes Baton Rouge, Zachary, Prairieville, Gonzales, Denham Springs, and Walker. You can call us at (225) 614-9520.
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Nathan Rust is the Managing Partner at Prestigious Painting. He is passionate about service and gives back through his business with “Paint it Forward” and the “Young Entrepreneur Scholarship”. Nathan is married to his wife, Amanda and they have two children, Elijah and Grace.
Nathan founded the Rotary Club of Southeast Baton Rouge with 24 other local leaders in February 2020, and served as Club President from 2020-2022. He also serves as the Charter Organization Representative to Pack 15, where his son is a member as a Cub Scout.
Nathan was elected as the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board Representative for District 6 on November 8th, 2022. In this new opportunity, Nathan aims to strengthen our school system by ensuring every child in EBR has access to high-quality schools, regardless of where they live or their economic status.
