Removing Wallpaper DIY

When we purchased our home there were a number of items that immediately stuck out. First and foremost was the wall to wall carpeting, but a close second was the wallpaper. Now, I’m not here to opine on how wallpaper is an antiquated design element that shouldn’t be used. Each and every one of us has their own stylistic preferences and I’ve seen many instances where wallpaper can look absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case in our house. So, like with many other things, it just had to go.

Doing some research I concluded that “Chomp! World’s Best Wallpaper Stripper” was my best bet. The reviews were very positive and people genuinely seemed to like it. I’ve removed wallpaper a number of times and done it a number of different ways, from removing it completely dry, to using a steamer. Each and every experience I have ever had though was horrendous. It is a tedious process where you end up picking bits and pieces off with your fingers for what seems like an eternity. As such, if the Chomp product helped at all, that’d be wonderful. I searched around a bit online but couldn’t really find any deals worthwhile. Ultimately I ended up buying it at my local Home Depot for $13.97 a gallon. I also picked up a pressurized sprayer and some putty knives to help scrape it off.

I picked a wall in our foyer to start off with. Placing the product into the pressurized sprayer I gave it a light misting and let the product sit for a few minutes. After which I began to pull the wallpaper off. To my surprise it was coming off in large bountiful chunks. Unfortunately, it was also leaving behind the adhesive layer, so not that good. I resprayed the adhesive layer and began to peel that off as well. As I had feared though, it was coming off in small chunks and was a total pain to clear one section.
Feeling that this process was going to take much longer than what I had hoped, I figured I might as well take off the entire top layer throughout the house. I gave all the wallpaper a light mist and began pulling it off. After about an hour and two garbage bags later, all the heavy stuff was off. The only thing remaining was the adhesive layer.

Having resigned myself to the reality that this might take days of work, I began attacking a section at a time. Thoroughly soaked the first section, I began to peel off small pieces when luckily my father-in-law walked in and asked me what the hell I was doing. He quickly chided me and told me that I’d never finish that way. Picking up a spatula I was using to raise up the corners of the sections, he simply scraped it right across the soaked adhesive layer. Oh man, what a sight. The adhesive paper came off in clean chunks, like scraping soft snow off a windshield.

From there on out we were done in only a few hours. I ended up buying another gallon, but by following the soak, sit, scrape method he had shown me, it all came off quite easily. A few things to remember if you have to do this yourself. First, attack only a small section at a time. If the solution dries on the wall, it loses its effectiveness quickly. Secondly, the solution is very runny, like water. Because of this it’ll tend to accumulate at the bottom of the wall. Other than that though, it was simple. The hardest paper to take off was a decorative strip in the bedroom. This paper was very thin and glossy. As such, we couldn’t just peel off the top layer, and the solution wouldn’t soak in. That paper ended up taking as long as the rest of the house. All in all though, the product worked well, and we were able to finish in about half a day.

Rating the wallpaper stripping experience:

• Anyone can do it!
• You’re in too deep! Seek help!

I’m going to go with “Anyone can do it!”. There’s nothing physically or intellectually difficult to this process, it’s just very, very tedious. If it wasn’t for my father-in-law I would have lost a whole weekend. Yet, without a doubt, the “Chomp! World’s Best Wallpaper Stripper” saved me hours. It gets a huge thumbs up from my end.

Useful Parts & Tools to Help you with this DIY Project: