Stripping Like A Pro

By Rich Knapfel

About a year ago, while driving through my neighborhood, I stumbled across an extremely rare find. Well, at least for me it was extremely rare. Perched atop a table in the center of a neighbor’s driveway was a fully assembled, two story, six-room dollhouse. When I asked how much the proprietor wanted for the mansion she said “thirty dollars.” Before I could utter the word DEAL, she lowered the price to twenty five. I immediately wrote out a check and loaded the house into my car.

This house, by no means, was something that could be fixed and sold immediately. In fact, it was a mess! The house required new paint, shingles, shutters and what ever else I could think of to turn this investment into a gem.

The exterior would not pose much of a problem, but what really concerned me were the interior walls. The previous designer decided to wallpaper everything! I don’t mean just the walls. The ceilings were no strangers to wallpaper either. The old wallpaper needed to be removed and fast!

After careful research and speaking with my local miniature shop owner, I came away with three good ways to strip old wallpaper like a professional.

White Vinegar

Spray Bottle.

Small Paint Scraper

Using a spray bottle, mix 1/3 white vinegar and 2/3 water in a spray bottle. give the contents a shaking to combine the vinegar and water. Next, spray the wallpapered surface with the solution and allow it to “work some magic” before attacking the surface with a small paint scraper.

The vinegar solution does a very good job of loosening up the old glue and freeing the paper from any wood surface.

Small Hand Cotton Towel

Medium Size Bowl

Small Paint Scraper

Rubber Gloves

Soak a hand towel in a water bowl and place both in the microwave for approximately two minutes. While wearing rubber gloves, remove the towel from the bowl, wring out the excess water and fold the towel into a manageable size. Press the towel against the surface of the wall and hold it there for a couple of minutes. After, the steam has loosened the glue the paper can be removed with your paint scraper.

Spray Bottle

Small Paint Scraper

Another method, which can work well, is saturating the old paper with a straight water solution. This method will only work well if the glue bonding the paper to the wall is brittle, thin or old.

This method is very simple. Saturate the wall with water, wait about ten minutes, then scrape until the paper peals or your arm falls off.

I’m sure if we researched this topic long enough we all could find plethora of ways to remove that pesky old paper. These are just some of the ways with which you can remove that paper in fair amount of time.