Remember our hideous closet that someone covered with granny shabby chic flowery wallpaper?
I marched into the closet early on Saturday morning, determined to deflower all 3 walls by lunchtime. Here were my weapons of choice:
L to R: scraper, spray bottle, fabric softener.
I saw some remodeling show on HGTV where the designer said that her favorite way of removing wallpaper is hosing it with a mixture of hot water and fabric softener, letting it soak for a few minutes, then peeling up the paper. Her wallpaper came off in big strips, easy peasy. She didn’t break out in hives or throw a crying fit like so many of my friends who shared their wallpaper horror stories. I was sold.
I went into the closet and doused all 3 walls with the fabric softener / hot water mixture. I went down to the kitchen to slam a cup of coffee and stomped back upstairs, ready to annihilate some wallpaper. That stuff was coming down in big strips.
Only that’s not how it worked out. Even though I had sprayed the walls really well and let them soak for 10 minutes, the edges of the wallpaper weren’t coming up. I ended up using my scraper to peel underneath:
Then I basically had to scrape up and down until little shreds of paper tore off and fell to the ground. I’m not sure what they used to glue that stuff to the walls — Gorilla glue? Super glue? Pixie magic?! — but it wasn’t coming off at all, let alone in the big strips I had hoped for.
I worked for a solid 15 minutes. I broke out into a sweat, I bit back tears, I threw every curse word I know at that wall and then invented new curse words so I could keep on going. But the wallpaper wasn’t coming off. At. All. No matter how hard I scraped or how much I sprayed the wall.
That’s the moment when Bradley came in and asked, “What are you doing? We’re demolishing those walls. You don’t need to take the wallpaper off.”
Uhhhhh…..oops.
What we learned from our attempt at deflowering our wall:
- HGTV lies.
- Communication is very, very important.
- Sometimes the best way to take down wallpaper is to tear down the entire wall.
Oh, gurrrrrrrrl. Wallpaper can suck a big fatty and you’ve already heard my wah wah story about that. So, I will just say that I sympathize. It sucks even more than you did all of that work unnecessarily.
P.S. That is exactly what the wallpaper we *were* able to remove looked like. Little, snarled and teeny pissant pieces of paper.
Kudos to the glue manufacturer for making a quality product that lasts, but holy smokes, that stuff was a giant pain in the butt! Luckily, I only invested about 30 minutes of my morning to that big ol’ time suck. It would have been so much worse if I finished the entire wall and THEN got called out for not paying attention!
I sympathize – it’s my current job in the master and that stuff DOES. NOT. WANT. TO COME. OFF! Unfortunately, we’re not demolishing those walls or we’ll be staring out into the back yard, so I’ll have to keep at it. =o(
Ack! So sorry to hear that. De-wallpaper is so not fun. Have you tried a steamer? How about a glue remover? Not sure how much those cost, but I’ve heard they can work when nothing else will. Good luck! Worst case scenario you end up sanding and painting over it!
Oh no! I would have been so mad I probably would have kicked a hole in the wall after hearing that.
Ohhhh yeah. There was a hammer that got punched right through a wall. And I had a LOT of fun demolishing that room later on. Good riddance to crusty wallpaper!
If you ever figure out how to take down some other wall’s wallpaper (as you’re demolishing those walls, too funny), let me know! I went through the same thing in our bathroom two years ago, and now it looks just like your closet. Only, we’re not tearing our walls down.
It’s a good topic for conversation when people come over — but I am definitley on the hunt for a good way to strip the walls…
Oh no! That sounds awful. Luckily for you, we have to de-wallpaper our entire living room. I’ll figure something out by then, because HGTV’s little tip was useless!
Perforating and steam work pretty well, but…that is for modern glues. The older glues aren’t necessarily so prone to softening and end up needing the scrape and flake method anyways.
Thanks, Trey. Now I’m wondering if I can just take a sander to the plaster walls and shave a layer off. Gahahaha!
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