DIY Wallpaper Removal {what worked for me}

The other day I posted a picture of my three beauties removing wallpaper from our dining room (see below).  At the time, we were about 30% started (after about a week of scraping) and had a long way to go. Especially since we also had to remove wallpaper from the living room, hallway and two bathrooms.  Ugh!

Gorgeous, eh!

After I posted these pics, a friend suggested that I use a spray bottle with fabric softener to remove wallpaper.   I tried it and it worked like a charm!

Here are the supplies you will need:

• Spray bottle or bucket with sponge
• A scraper
• wallpaper scoring tool
• hot water
• fabric softener

Use one cap full of fabric softener with one spray bottle full of hot water (as hot as you can get it without burning yourself)

Step One: We were lucky that our home didn’t have any furniture so no heavy lifting and moving.  We started off just picking a corner where the wall paper was easy to peel and started pulling it up and out.  The first layer of wall paper is pretty easy to remove and shouldn’t give you a hard time, but if it does you can use the water solution to help with the removal.

Step Two: The under layer of wall paper is a bit tough and has all that yucky glue.  At this point I used a small scoring tool, like the one pictured above (you can get at any hardware store) and scored the walls.  The small holes will allow the solution to remove the glue behind the wallpaper.   I highly recommend you do this step because it will help, trust me!

Step Three:  Spray your wall with the solution and let it sit for about five minutes.  Remember to spray small sections at a time or you’ll have to respray the wall -speaking from experience here folks!  I did one strip to two strips at a time (or whatever you can do in less than fifteen minutes).  Then grab your handy-dandy scraper and scrape that bad boy- scrape it I say!   You can use a wallpaper scraper or a putty knife.  We used our awesome father in laws tools which was a huge time saver!  God Bless that man!

Some of our wallpaper came off super easy (easy enough that my six year old just peeled it off -top and bottom layers!) other areas were not so easy and we had to spray and scrape several times until we got it all out.  But in the end all the wallpaper is off the living room, dining room and the hall way -woohoo!  The bathrooms will be left for another day.  Next up on our project is cleaning and “mudding” the walls until they’re nice and smooth.

Until next time…

Adios xxoo
Awilda