**Apologies in advance for the poor photos. I took these with my phone because I can’t find the camera and Maeve and her wonderful photo skills are not at home.
Mid-way through today’s project (which is still incomplete), Brett turns to me and says ‘You should call your post about this The Devil Made Wallpaper.’ And he’s right. I will never ever ever wallpaper another wall in this house because un-doing it is a nightmare.
Today’s project was removing the wallpaper glue from Hailey and Hannah’s room. When I was working on the bathroom, I had tested it a while ago to see what it would take. The vinyl wallpaper itself came down super easily, courtesy of Maeve, who I think won a championship medal in wall-paper stripping. However, it left behind a mustardy glue that I knew needed to come down too.
We mixed up some TSP and water, put it in spray bottles and put gloves on everyone and got to work.
And I am glad we did because beneath what looks like just glue was this spider-webby grossness that I have never seen before. Has anyone seen this before because I never have?
All in all, we scrubbed and scrubbed and didn’t make as much progress as we had hoped. We sprayed the TSP mixture on and scrubbed in circles. The webby stuff came off in wet clump and the glue was muddy and sticky. Then we wiped the cleaned wall with a wet rag. It was definitely high labor intensive and after an hour your arms are not feeling super strong nor do you get all that far. After an hour of four people scrubbing (okay, two little people gave up after half an hour), we got maybe 25% of the room done. Our goal is to finish over the long weekend and start painting next week.
How courageous – to tackle that wallpaper! Our experience after several people trying over a period of several days … my son-in-law ended up removing the wallboard and putting up new walls in our little downstairs guest bathroom!
Hi Nancy,
It is SO frustrating. Is your house full of wallpaper too? We are actually contemplating painting over it in our bedroom, which requires a ton of prep work to sand down the seams, etc. But better than trying to get it all down!
Brandy
Looks like tough work… who ever is sitting at the computer should come help you!
The girls gave up after half an hour. It was really tough work. Baby steps!
That looks like a job for the young and the highly motivated. The webby stuff is really creepy! It’s a good thing you have a lot of hands to help, even if it’s just a half hour at a time.
Thank goodness for kids, right?