Spring 22 ORC Week Three: Wallpaper & Carpet Removal
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It’s week three of the One Room Challenge and this was a BIG one for us! This was the last room in our house with wallpaper, and over the past two years we’ve been working on removing it little by little when we’ve had time from our other house projects. It was a lot more involved than we were expecting with a surprise second layer of wallpaper hiding behind the first, but with a lot of determination, steaming & scraping, we finally got every last bit off the wall.
First layer of blue patterned wallpaper on the left and second layer of wallpaper backing/old wallpaper on the right
Old wallpaper stuck to the back of newer wallpaper
Remaining old wallpaper with leaf pattern, grey and white paint, and darker tan drywall peeking through
Scraping the last layer of wallpaper off and finally getting to the drywall
Old wallpaper and paint on the left, drywall on the right
Before sanding
After sanding
Here’s a breakdown of the process:
Steam wallpaper with our Wagner Wallpaper Steamer for 15-20 seconds in sections
Lift corners of wallpaper with a putty knife and then pull wallpaper off in strips (or as much as we could get at a time)
Steam the wallpaper backing and scrape with a putty knife to remove
Chip away layer of paint with a putty knife
Repeat by steaming second layer of wallpaper for 15-20 seconds in sections and scraping with a putty knife
Remove ceiling trim with a crowbar
Sand remaining pieces with an orbital sander (I recommend wearing safety glasses and a mask during this step)
Wipe down walls with a damp cloth to remove sanding dust, let dry
Patch any uneven spots with joint compound using a putty knife, smoothing out the surface with a taping knife
Easy, right? 😂 Like I said before, this was a lot more work than we were expecting for this step of our room transformation, but now that it’s over, I can say it was absolutely worth it. We’re so excited to be able to prime and paint the walls and really bring out the beauty of this room!
The next step was finally seeing what was going on under the old carpet. We kept it in place as a protective layer from all of the wet, mushy wallpaper as we removed it, but once that step was finished, we couldn’t wait to rip it up.
BEFORE
AFTER
We were SO relived to find the original hardwood mostly in great condition! A few areas have some minor water damage, but overall the floor looks great. We don’t think it’s ever been stained or sealed, so we have a lot of options for what we can do next. For now, though, we have a ton of staples to pull up and remaining bits of carpet padding to vacuum, but we’re incredibly happy with what we found!
Watch our time lapse reel
Next week we’ll be continuing our work on the floors — can’t wait to share more then!
