There are a lot of walls out there covered
with ugly, old wallpaper that, quite frankly, needs to go.
Getting rid of it can instantly update the look of your room.
I'll show you how to remove it yourself
so you can give the walls a paint
and instantly freshen up your room.
Now, there's a few different ways
and many different products out there
that you can use for stripping wallpaper.
Before you go out and wasting a whole lot of money,
what you should invest in is a nice, little spatula like this.
Now, I've sanded off the corners just
to make sure there's no sharp edges that's going to dig
into the wall board behind.
Now, ideally, we would like to use the spatula
to slip in behind the wallpaper and try and slip it
all off in one piece.
If that's the case, we've got ourselves a nice, simple job.
Now, just make sure you throw yourself a tarpaulin down
before you start your work.
[SCRAPING]
Now, as you can see, that piece of paper
came off really, really easy.
But what we have got underneath is this backing paper.
Now, there's no way we're going to be able to scrape that off.
So what we're going to have to do is soak the wall.
Before I soak the wall, I'm going
to remove the rest of the wallpaper.
Lucky for me, in this room, a spatula
is all I need for the top layer.
If you find the wallpaper doesn't peel off easily,
then spray the walls with hot water and allow to soak in.
Now a really good, simple way of soaking the wall
is by using a pump garden spray.
All I've got in there is hot water.
Before you spray, tape over all power
sockets, or flick the fuse off to the room.
So let's just start from the top and just work our way
around the room.
And by the time we're finished, we'll
come back and start back at the beginning.
And then we can start ripping into it.
So all the hot water is doing is just
releasing that wallpaper paste from that fine backing paper.
[SPRAYING]
Righty-o.
I've given the room a really good soak.
Now, before I give it another soak,
I just want to test it just to see
how easy that paper comes off.
Now, what we don't want to do is let the water dry on the wall.
So let's just try, see how easy it is.
[PEELING]
So that's coming off really, really nice.
We may need to wet the wall in a couple of areas.
But as you can see, there's nothing to it.
So technique is, obviously, we've rounded off our spatula.
So we're not going to dig into the wall.
And that's just peeling off really nicely.
[SCRAPING, PEELING]
Now that all came off relatively easy.
If you've found yourself in a situation where
the wallpaper was really stuck hard,
you could grab yourself one of these, a wallpaper steamer.
That'll sort the job out for you.
Now that all the hard work is done,
what you're going to have to do now
is apply an oil-based pigmented sealer to the walls.
Before you do that, give the walls
a wipe down with a damp sponge to remove any wallpaper paste
residue.
Now, because these walls are not at a paint-quality finish,
I'm going to have to get a plasterboard stopper in
to come and give these walls a skim before I apply my paint.
There you go, old wallpaper gone.
Now you can give your room a fresh new look like this.
Amazing what a little bit of hard work and a splash of paint
can do.