When we toured our house, the wallpaper in the upstairs bedrooms caught our eye, and not in a good way. We could easily picture how bright and airy the rooms would look without the busy, floral, metallic (in some cases extremely dark) wallpaper. It was put up by the previous owner in the 1990s, so knowing it wasn’t original made the decision to remove it much easier.

We nicknamed each room after their wallpaper color to make discussing plans less confusing. The pink and teal rooms have the same layout whereas the aqua room is smaller with a tiny attached bath. It was listed as the master bedroom, but after spending some time in each room we decided the pink room would work best for us. Because we only need one of the bedrooms to be move-in ready in the beginning, we’ve been focusing most of our energy there. Luckily we have all the time in the world to keep working on the other two rooms after we’ve moved in.

The wallpaper in the pink room was only applied on certain walls and the whole room had been painted before, so the smooth surface was a breeze to work with. We covered the floor in a drop cloth and sprayed one panel of wallpaper at a time with Zinsser Wallpaper Stripper that we got from Home Depot. After a minute or two we could see the wallpaper lifting in sections and bubbles forming, and we were able to peel off the top layer in strips and even sometimes full sheets. The backing of the paper still stuck to the wall, though, so we made a second pass with the spray. That’s one thing we wildly underestimated was how much spray we’d need, which might have a lot to do with the metallic finish of the wallpaper. We initially got two 32 oz. spray bottles figuring one bottle per room would be enough. We’ve now gone through three gallon sized containers to remove the wallpaper from the pink room, the pink room’s closet, and the teal room. We’ll probably use another two gallons to get the remaining wallpaper down in the aqua room, closet, and breakfast nook in the kitchen.

Pink room — left half is fully removed, right half still has wallpaper backing

Although the wallpaper was relatively easy to remove in the pink room, the closet was another story. Instead of being applied to a smooth painted wall like it was in the bedroom, the wallpaper in the closet was applied straight onto the drywall paper. I figured it was the same wallpaper backing we’d removed from the bedroom and got really excited when I saw bits of wall peaking through as I kept scraping. Turns out it was the drywall paper I was scraping off which most definitely should not have been removed. I immediately Googled “how to repair drywall” and luckily it wasn’t a hard fix. I painted some Drywall Primer in the whole closet, including over the damaged section, and it sealed everything in perfectly. I need to take a progress photo to show how the primer looks, but we now have a prepped surface ready to paint, which we’re planning to finish up this weekend.

Pink room closet with wallpaper removed before primer was applied

The teal room was more of a challenge because of the wall texture, thickness of the wallpaper, and sheer volume of it. That stuff was everywhere. Instead of being applied to a smooth, painted wall like it was in the pink room, this wall was unpainted, uneven, and the texture was rough, making the wallpaper stick way more. We used the same method, spraying and removing the top layer of wallpaper and then spraying again to remove the backing. We used this Husky Wallpaper Scraper to get the really stuck-on pieces and eventually we got it all down! We think we’ll have to use wall mud in here before we can paint, so for now we’re putting this room on hold until after we move in.

Teal room — left half has wallpaper removed and wallpaper backing still on the wall

The aqua room is the last one left and we aren’t in a huge rush to get to work on it yet. We have some ideas for how we want to renovate this room long-term, but it would be a much bigger project and we couldn’t do it entirely ourselves. For now I’ll just keep pinning inspiration photos for when we eventually get to work on it.

Hopefully our experience with wallpaper removal helps you with your own home renovation project! There have been plenty of ups and downs and lessons learned along the way, but the long hours of work will be so worth it in the end :)

Are you working on a home improvement project? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

Removing Wallpaper

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