Removing wall paper from our old duplex has become a weekly Saturday task. I go up, tackle half a room. Eventually get fed up, hungry, tired, and sore right shoulder and head home semi-exhilarated for what I accomplished and semi-defeated for what still lies ahead.
I have tried everything with steamers and different types of spray on wall paper remover. Honestly there just isn’t a good way to do it. Especially when you have multiple layers.
One of the down stairs rooms had about 5 layers of wall paper on it. No, that little rolly wheel thing didn’t work either for perforating the paper. I mean it worked, just not as advertised.
I would say it took three good tries to finally finish up the bottom room so we could get a good look at the horse-hair plaster that was underneath. Going to need some patchwork and a good skim coat and paint job now.
Oh and this stuff is the best. It claims to be the best and with the different ones I tried, I would say that yes, it is the world’s best.
But being an old house, there are more rooms to tackle. The master bedroom as a couple layers and these was a small play area we thought we would clean up and clear also.
As you can see in the above photo, the master bedroom has really bad wallpaper and it has got to go. I would saw we have the paper half-removed already and it needs another good day’s worth of work. The play area room is clear and no more wall paper there either now.
The hallway does have some interesting vintage paper, but that is going to stay up for now.
We have hired a contractor to come in and renovate – ahem – gut the bathroom and kitchen for us and completely redo them.
The full remodel will allow us to increase the rent we receive on this side. While I will only break even for the year due to the renovation, it will allow us to have this increased rent and little worry on this until for many many years to come.
