Dos and Don’ts For Removing Wallpaper in St. Louis, MO

When you’re looking to paint one of the rooms of the interior of your home, you may encounter a major obstacle that could get in your way — wallpaper.

The thing you should know about finding wallpaper in a room when you want to paint that room is that you have two choices — either paint over that wallpaper or remove the wallpaper prior to painting the walls.

If you decide you want to paint the walls and therefore remove the wallpaper, you should be aware that there are ways to remove wallpaper that are significantly more effective than others — and some things that if you do them will hinder your wallpaper removing project.

With that being the case, here are some dos and don’ts for removing wallpaper in St. Louis, MO.

DO: Check To See If The Wallpaper Can Be Easily Removed

Before you take the time to try to remove the wallpaper using traditional wallpaper removing techniques, you should make sure that the wallpaper can’t be easily removed without any such efforts.

There are certain wallpapers that are meant to be put on temporarily and then removed just as easily by being peeled off – if you have such a wallpaper, you won’t have to do more than that.

To find out, all you have to do is to grab a corner of the wallpaper from up top and give it a gentle tug — you can quickly tell you have easily removable wallpaper if it easily comes off.

DON’T: Try To Spray All Of The Room

As you may well know, the removing of wallpaper involves first moistening the glue under the wallpaper and then removing it.

You may think that it’s okay to just get all of the glue moist in the entire room and then going on to remove all of the wallpaper — but that isn’t at all how it works in practice.

You will most likely find that the initial wallpaper you moistened will be dry once more by the time you get around back to it — so it’s better to moisten and remove one section of wallpaper at a time.

Do: Put In Extra Effort When You Have Washable Wallpaper

There is a certain kind of wallpaper that is more easily washed — it is meant for high traffic areas and places where you’re likely going to have people that tend to apply dirty fingers to the walls (the kitchen being one particularly popular for such wallpaper…)

The issue with such washable wallpaper is that it’s a bit more difficult to remove — after all, you can’t easily get the glue under the wallpaper moist just by moistening the surface, as that is precisely how you clean the wallpaper.

Instead, you’re going to have to prick holes in the surface of the wallpaper through whatever means you can, though it is notable that you can find specific tools tools that will do a great job in allowing moisture under the surface of the wallpaper.

It’s important to note that you should not just put holes in one area of the wallpaper but rather throughout the room with the wallpaper such that you will be able to remove it better.

Don’t: Forget To Bring Trash Bags On Hand

Lastly, it’s important to remember to have trash bags on hand for the removal of wallpaper.

The reason this is a good idea is that is that when you are pulling wallpaper off of the walls, it makes such a terrible mess that if you don’t put the wallpaper right into garbage bags, you are likely to make a bigger mess.

Do yourself a favor and just put the trash right into the bags before it becomes a bigger problem.

We would love the opportunity to be your go-to exterior painter in St. Louis, MO. Call us at 314-582-5272 to book a FREE estimate, and let us help you enhance the interior of your home so you can focus on other things.

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