What To Do With Your Old Wallpaper?

When I was first starting out in the painting industry 20 years ago, I had an acquaintance that wanted me to remove her wallpaper in her hallway, then prime and paint it.  I gave her a price, and set out to take off the wallpaper.  To my surprise there ended up being three layers of wallpaper, and what I thought would take me half a day, ended up taking me three days.  I did go back to her and mentioned this, but she refused to pay me anymore, saying I gave her a solid price and that was what she would pay.  Twenty years later, that is why we do wallpaper on a time and material basis. You just never know how long it might take! Wallpaper can come off easily in nice large sections with little damage, or it can come off in dime size pieces and greatly damage your drywall.  So we give a ballpark price of what we think it will be, but we charge an hourly rate when doing this type of work.

When it comes to wallpaper you really have 3 main choices.  The right way is to remove the wallpaper, texture the walls if needed, then prime and paint.  You can rest easily at night that you will have a great product.  The other two options are not ideal, but we do it a few times a year because a customer wants to save money and not strip the wallpaper.  We can prime and paint straight over the wallpaper, assuming it is on solid with no peeling edges.  The other is we prime the wallpaper, texture right over it, then prime and paint it like a normal wall.  The problem with either of these methods is that there is no guarantee your wallpaper will not lift away, start bubbling or have other issues under the weight of the new top coats.

So, if you no longer want the wallpaper look, you have choices but there is really only one safe way to deal with it, and that is to remove it.

- Jeremy Brooks