How to remove wallpaper. Tips removing wallpaper with a steamer.

NK Painting. In this task, we're going to show you how to remove wallpaper from an interior wall. We have an interior wall that's about 8 1/2 8 ft high by about 12 ft wide. This wall will take approximately 2 hours to remove the wallpaper. In this task, we're actually using a Warner electric wallpaper steamer. And we purchased this steamer online and it cost approximately $400. And you can actually rent these wallpaper steamers for approximately $75 a day. The steamer comes with two different fittings. A wide one about six 6 in wide and then it has one about 2 in wide. That's for getting behind toilets and tight places. And in this task, you're going to actually need a ladder, some form of ladder, either 6ft or 3ft ladder. You're going to need a drop cloth. And you're going to need a trash bag to put the trash in. And a couple different types of putty knives. We use a 2-in putty knife and a 4-in putty knife to remove the wallpaper. We also use a screwdriver to actually get off the wall plates and switch plates. Use an Xacto knife to cut any type of wallpaper that's behind baseboards or trim that you can't get the steamer behind to actually remove it. During the process of removing the wallpaper, typically most wallpaper is going to have two two layers of wallpaper. You're going to have a vinyl layer. You can see on the video here, there's a dark layer and then underneath that is the paper layer that's actually has the glue adhesive onto the wall. And you use the steamer in a process. Heat up the wallpaper, pull the vinyl layer off, and then you're going to begin taking off the glued layer. You want to keep the drop cloth up against your baseboards at all times, so the steam and water that's running down will actually be absorbed into the drop cloth and not the carpet. You got to be patient. You just hold the steamer in one area and it's going to actually steam, soften up the glue, soften up the paper. You begin scraping that area and then move your steamer over. Removing wallpaper is um a long task. Takes patience. Doesn't come off fast. Doesn't come off easy. Typical 10 by 12 walls take approximately 2 hours. This has been about an hour and 45 minutes on this wall here. When you're using a potty knife, you want to make sure the paper is nice and soft. Use the putty knife when you put it up against the wall. Make sure it's flat so it doesn't gouge the walls. If you make too many gouges and marks, you're going to have to retexture the walls. About 50% of the walls that you remove wallpaper from, you're going to have to retexture the walls. That's pretty common. See, she's holding the rough paper removal tool with one hand, taking the paper off with putty knife with the other hand. She'll switch it back and forth. Use both hands. That way you're one hand doesn't get tired doing all the work picking the paper off. You can see the dark layer is the vinyl layer. The lighter layer is the paper layer that has the glue on it. If you patiently remove the wallpaper, the wall should look nice and clean just like this. the steamer. Once you load the steamer wrap with water, it'll take about 15 minutes for it to heat up. So, as soon as you get to the job site or or where you're going to remove wallpaper, you want to actually fill up the steamer with water. We use just a little Tupperware container that we fill up with water. Then, you empty it into the steamer. The steamer itself has a black cap on the top right here. This black cap will just unscrew. Just fill it up with water and then you just plug it in to any 110 outlet. Actually has a full marker. We actually go a line to show it where it's full. But it there's an indicator right there that tells you how much water is left in the steamer. Occasionally you're going to have to fill the steamer up with water. We don't use any chemicals, just plain water. We don't put any chemicals on the walls. We don't score the wallpaper. There's products called the paper tiger that actually score the wallpaper. We don't use any type of products cuz it actually damages the walls, then will cause you to have to retexture the walls. You just use a steamer and putty knives and water. That's all we use to actually rem remove the wallpaper. And then after that, we just pick up all the pieces, roll up the drop cloth, throw everything in the garbage, and the job's complete.