# 10 of 101 tips on house painting and decorating - building maintenance - wallpaper removal

Painting and Decorating today is made easier with the wide range of easy to use DIY products and non toxic paints and repair compounds.

Still the elbow grease is needed  to complete any painting and decorating task.

Anyone will tell you that preparation is the key to a fine finish, so tackling the finishing plastering of any wall or ceiling should be left up to a professional plasterer.

However the laborious task of removing wallpaper you can tackle yourself and in most cases it will save you thousands of dollars.

Tools you will need-
Bucket
Mop
Wallpaper stripper solution
Flat paint scraper 10cm wide (stiff)
Tungsten paint scraper
Steamer (hire one from your local hire center)
Ladders
dropcloths
Radio

The time it will take to strip a room will depend on the type and age of the wallpaper.

Vinyl wallpaper from the 60's onwards is realitively simple to remove as all you will need to do is rip the surface layer of by lifting a corner and pulling.
For tough glues you will need to steam the surface after perforating the vinyl layer. You can buy a small mouse like device with spiky wheels that will do the job.
Once you are left with the paper backing this can be steamed off or some will just need to be run over with a mop or cloth to wet it and a flat scraper will do the rest

Older wallpapers are tougher to remove as they only come off in annoyingly small strips and often have been painted or papered over a number of times. Your steamer will get a lot of use here. Test a small area first before you decide how to tackle this part of your house painting

Painting and decorating Tips-

Start in one corner and concentrate on one area at a time moving only when that area is finished. It will seem slower than running around the easy bits first then going back to the difficult bits later, but you will get a better finish in the end.

Use a flat scraper only on the flat side only. This may sound obvious but don't gouge your wallboard if you can help it, let your steamer do most of the work.

Before you repair or plaster make sure the board is secure to the framing, here is where a few screws or nail will stop any cracks or nail pops from coming through you finished painting and decorating job.

If you are planning to re wallpaper make sure you 'size' or seal the wall board first.

If you are planning to paint you will have to plaster first as the original finish wont be up to a high quality painting and decorating standard. Make sure your professional plasterer uses paper tape on the sheet joins.

You may also need a coat of 'pigmented sealer' to stop any residue of glue coming through your house painting top coats. Unfortunately the best sealer is oil based so wear a mask and have good ventilation.

Don't worry if you make a mess of the wall due to stubborn glue, your plasterer will skim  a flat coat of plaster to hide any damage.

Unfortunately  there are no real short cuts to a proper painting and decorating job. 

The finish is the reward to your efforts.
Happy stripping
Andre

# 11 of 101 tips on house painting and decorating - building maintenance - Painting over your old wallpaper

Here are a a few more tips on house painting and decorating, to help with your home renovations projects.

You leafed through a few magazines and got inspired with some great interior design ideas and fantastic paint colours. You'd like to freshen up a room in your house, which has this super ugly wallpaper on the walls. Ok... so you've tried removing some of the ugly wallpaper and you've realised what a mammoth task it actually is (painting and decorating is not as easy as it looks!).

Now you're thinking........lets paint over it instead!

Before you get your house painting gear out, let's first check the state of the wall paper. You will have to make sure the wall paper is glued down well enough to paint over. Well...... we can fairly safely assume its well glued down, since you gave up on the wallpaper removal job. Either that, or you want to keep the painting and decorating to a minimum effort.

If the wallpaper is lifting away from the wall anywhere, then now is the time to glue it back down with some PVA or wallpaper glue. If it keeps curling away from the wall, you may need to tape or staple it down temporarily until the glue dries.

Next you need to roll the area with pigmented sealer to make sure you paper doesn't lift during painting and decorating. If there is already a coat of paint on the wallpaper, you can skip ithis step.
Apply the pigmented sealer. If the paper bubbles, don't panic straight away. Just wait untill the paper is dry, as often these bubbles go away by themselves. If there are lots of bubbles and they don't go away when dry,  I'm afraid you will just have to give up and strip the paper off the wall before painting and decorating. Or give us a call at Banks Building Maintenance to get a free quote on doing the painting and decorating for you. We have good house painter on the books.

Tip: Yes you should use the oil based sealer.

Next, plaster repair any holes or scratches you want to hide. This may not be easy due to textured paper, but get creative, you can hide lots under and good painting and decorating job. In your house painting kit you should have a few textured rollers to roll over fresh repairs to add texture.

If the wall is really bad you may consider a skim coat of plaster over the whole wall. I suggest you leave this up to your professional plasterer. Please give us a call at Banks Building Maintenance for a free quote.

Finally use a low sheen washable paint like Dulux Wash n Wear or Resene Space Coatto paint your wall.

Remember don't be too critical of your finished work. You will always see any tiny fault, because you are up close and personal with your latest house painting efforts.

Happy house painting
Andre