DH and I are under contract for a home (fingers crossed it works out!!) and it has wallpaper is almost every room...extremely old wallpaper, but in excellent shape (as in no peeling)....I loathe the thought of stripping the wallpaper off and the time, energy and damage it could cause to the walls...Plus as everyone knows, living in a construction zone with young children sucks. DH and I are tempted to paint over the wallpaper. Does anyone have experience in this?? or any tips, horror stories?? success stories??
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I've never done it, but my house has it. Honestly, I'd probably strip it because as a person dealing with painted-over wallpaper that's peeling, it's annoying and I wish the former owners had just stripped it. YHL has stripped wallpaper in a couple of the rooms in their new house and are testing out all the methods, so you might want to check out their site.
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@evansjamie: Yes, I totally stalked their posts about striping the wallpaper in their new house! I might try Sherry's bathroom method in ours, since its a small room and see how it goes. UGH I just hate to think of how long and crappy it'll be to do the living room and bedrooms.
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If it's a home i am going to be living in for the long haul, i'd strip the paper and paint over it. But here are some links for you:
http://www.benjaminmoore.ca/en-ca/for-your-home/painting-over-wallpaper
http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/paint-over-wallpaper.htm
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/when-to-paint-over-paper-color-145819
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@freckles: Thanks
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I personally would strip it. What if it turned out bad - stripping wallpaper with paint on top of it?! You'd probably be better off just redoing the drywall!
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We thought about it but we had it stripped and painted!
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@autumnlove: was it was sucky as I think its going to be?
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@CottonCandy: Wallpaper stripping party? That could be fun.
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@evansjamie: Hahaha yesss!
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@CottonCandy: our contractors were very annoyed! I guess there were 5 layers of wallpaper...
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@autumnlove: I would LOVE to hire out for this project, I just wish it was in the budget! You're smart!!
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We did 4 rooms of wallpaper stripping ourselves. It wasn't *that* bad. The worst part is wall repair if needed. Our wallpaper wasn't applied correctly, so it took off the first layer of drywall paper X-( 4 coats of mudding/sanding later... :'(
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@CottonCandy: we had a lot of wallpaper borders in our current house. The family room gave me SO much issues!! I used every method out there in the www along with purchased products. It was stubborn!
Finally DH took a palm sander to it. -
doooon't do it! lol. In my office they painted over the wallpaper and it looks horrible. You can see the design (it is like raised a teeny tiny bit) through the paint. and now its like, impossible to get off bc it has been painted over.
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We stripped the wallpaper in our kitchen and it was awful. It was the same situation as yours, good condition but ugly. Oh, and as an added bonus, it was even on the ceiling and backs of the doors...lucky us? Anyway, we didn't want to leave it because you can usually see the seams under paint, but about seven hours into it we were cursing that decision because it was totally stuck and only coming off in like 1/4-inch by 3-inch strips. It had been there at least 35 years and I don't think they properly primed before slapping on the wallpaper glue, sigh. After it was done, though, we were very glad we put in the effort. We didn't have kids at the time, though, and still haven't felt strong enough to tackle the bathroom!
Anyway, my advice is to start stripping it in a very unobtrusive place, like behind the fridge or a bookshelf or something. If it's terribly stuck like ours was, you may not want to strip it all right now. I think there's actually a type of paintable wallpaper designed for this situation, where you put it up over the old stuff and it smooths everything out to take the new paint...but don't quote me on that. If it comes off relatively easily, then do it all now!
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Thanks for the responses ladies, I'm thinking we're gonna have to bite the bullet on this one and strip!!
If anyone else has experience, keep it coming!!
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@purplepeony: I hear ya...Its even on every outlet and light switch plate!!!
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I would definitely strip it, unless you want a temporary fix. Like if you're going to demo a room but need to hide the wallpaper temporarily. (We did that in my childhood home... the LIME GREEN and YELLOW galley kitchen, we just painted over all the cabinets, counters, EVERYTHING. My mom couldn't take it. But we demolished it after a month or two.) I just feel like it would be a lot more work later so if you can strip it now, you might as well!
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Each time I've had to strip wallpaper, it has peeled off super easy with just a spray bottle of water. I dread the thought of priming, painting, then having it peel off or bubble after all of that work!
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@CottonCandy: At least with outlets and switchplates you can just buy new ones.
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We bought a house that had some bad 80's wallpaper and other parts of the house that had painted wall paper.
It is much harder to strip the paper once the paint is on. This is because its harder to get the glue to come off through the paint. Plus you have to go through the time and money to paint, to only eventually have to strip it anyways.
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The previous owners of our house painted over wallpaper and I cursed them every time I pulled paper down. Don't. Do. It.
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@T.H.O.U.
@Mrs.Polish
Yeah, I feel uneasy about it, b/c in the back of my mind I know its a short fix for a big problem -
@CottonCandy: WHY do people do that??? I think we put at least 45-50 solid hours of work into our kitchen, between stripping the wallpaper and then painting the walls and ceiling.
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@purplepeony: I know its bizarre!!
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After you're done stripping, make sure you wash ALL the glue off the walls before you paint, otherwise your paint will do this, and you will cry for months while you try to figure out how to fix it:
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@swurlygurl: OMG wow! Thank you for sharing
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@swurlygurl: DH and I had the same situation - wallpaper stuck directly to unprimed drywall. Ugh.
But, all in all taking down the wallpaper - in what will hopefully be a nursery in the not too distant future - was definitely worth it and necessary since it only went 3/4 of the way up the wall and would have left a severe line.
What made it easier was buying a really inexpensive wallpaper steamer from amazon - like this one http://www.amazon.com/Wagner-Products-282018-1-Gallon-Wallpaper/dp/B0009XEL4O
It really sped up the job and required much less scraping and repair afterward. Also it just takes water - no chemicals! -
The parents of my boyfriend when I was 17 split up, and he moved in with his Dad. The house his Dad got was nice but needed decorating quickly and on a budget. They painted over the wallpaper in his room - a nice sunny yellow. However, on certain days and in certain light the oh so very very creep clowns that were on the wall paper (it had been a kids room - a scary kids room) would leer their way through the layers of primer and paint at us.
It was not good.
Therefore, due to the risk of the dated wallpaper coming back to haunt you, I would strip it. (Though I have no experience of such things and can't imagine it's remotely easy with small children around - it would probably be infinitely harder if you left it and had to do so in a few months/years once everything's in the house and...yeah.)
(PS Congrats on the house!)
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Only one half of a room in our new house had wallpaper on it. I say half because the top half of the walls was wallpaper and the bottom half was pretty wainscoting. We wanted to leave the wainscoting since it was already white and it looked nice in a nursery but the wallpaper just wasn't our thing. We had a painting party where a bunch of relatives and friends came the day after we signed on our house. We had one day to paint all the rooms with all that extra help so we chose not to strip the wallpaper and just painted over it. We used a solid and bright color paint. The wallpaper colors do not show through the paint. But occasionally in the right light I can see a little bit of the raised details from the wallpaper. It's not that noticeable and I have to be really close to the wall to see it. If this wasn't a nursery and was something more public like a dining room or living room then it'd bother me. It also helps that it is literally a half wall all the way around the room, not full-length walls. If we had to do the full walls in the nursery (or any room in the house) I would probably have stripped the wallpaper first to avoid the issue of potentially seeing the pattern through the paint.
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@cakelady
@oldenglandmamaThe creepy clowns made me lol...and thank you for sharing ladies!
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@OldEnglandMama: Oh my haha that would really freak me out!
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