Hopefully people won't give up completely on wallpaper since it can dramatically transform a room to look amazing!! Look for new product on the market that say EASYWALLS to find paper that pulls off in one strip- it really works.

I have tried both of those methods. They work for getting the wallpaper off but the most important survival tool was definitely beer.

Heres one for all of you DIY'ers. What if the wall paper has been painted over with a trillion coats of paint, how do you get THAT off?!

I would rather DIE then buy a home with Wallpaper. Done it twice....the most horrible job ever! If I look at buying a home and it has wallpaper I add $5,000 as a cost to hire someone to remove it. And I renovate for a living.

Amen to that, Bobolouli. We have painted wallpaper (I believe 2 layers of wallpaper) on top of plaster. Yikes!

Gosh, George, I have removed a TON of wallpaper in my life and never once thought of using beer! That definitely would have made the experience more pleasant. When I was a kid, my folks bought an old farm house that had, literally, 9 layers of wallpaper in every room on the first floor. Big huge flowers! I do like some big print wallpaper as an accent but every wall in every room--no way! So we used a lot of vinegar and water as hot as we could stand it and eventually got it all off. I don't think we even knew about steamers back then. My experience is that scoring and pre-soaking always seems to help even if you have a steamer. We just did our bedroom as a sort of team effort. My daughter was running the steamer and I was spraying and scraping. A trick I saw on HGTV was putting newspaper on top of the sprayed areas. It helps keep it from drying out and softens stuff up. I sprayed the wall, stuck the newspaper to the wall and then sprayed the newspaper, left it to "ripen" and then went on to another area. When I came back in a few minutes, the wallpaper came off much more easily with less scraping. I found the cheapest newspaper seemed to stay on the wall best. The WSJ was too heavy and wanted to fall off. A cheap shopper type paper worked great! So with 3 of us working, scraping and steaming, we got our fairly large bedroom done pretty quickly and painlessly, all things considered. I do think the wallpaper dictates what method works best. My daughter found just spraying and scraping worked better in her kitchen than trying to steam it, for some reason. The steamer worked great in our bedroom and a number of rooms I have done. Seriously, though, I'm getting to old for this kind of DIY, lol!

Just how easy or difficult wallpaper is to remove depends more on how the wall was prepped before the paper was hung, than it does what method you use to get the stuff off.

If the wallpaper person primed the bare drywall or plaster ("sized" it) before hanging paper, it will peel off fairly easily. People pulling their hair out over paper backing coming off in little pieces are dealing with paper that went up on un-sized walls.

Nothing you can do about that. Just try to keep the kids away from all the foul language that's part of the process.

Unfortunately, you usually can't tell if the wall was prepped correctly until you've tried removing the paper.

I know some will cry heresy, but if faced with paper that's a bear to strip, consider painting over it. Cover all the torn edges and all the seams with a quick-drying spackling medium, sand these areas, prime everything with a good sealer and you're ready to paint with a couple of coats of good paint.

Drywall is already covered with a layer of paper. What's another layer? Just make those seams disappear and you're good.

Six years later and I finally stripped the wallpaper in the seventh (and final) room last week! Neon flowers, olive green fleur-de-lis, country hearts...you name it, it hung on my walls. Having tried everything, my best suggestion is to crank up the tunes and just power through it -- it's an annoying process no matter what method you choose.

Boboloui and Rainbow Grace, my boyfriend and I are going through the exact same thing right now.

In our bedroom, we have 7 (!) layers of wallpaper underneath a layer of paint. In our hallway, we have 7 (once again, !) layers of wallpaper, brown paper bags glued on top of that, wall mud on top of that (some horrible texturing work) and paint on top of that.

We haven't found an easy fix, and we've tried a lot. We've been scraping down to the bottom layer of wallpaper, then using fabric softener/water mix to get final layer + glue off, and that is working the best for us.

I would love to hear if you figure out an easier way... we're exhausted!

Yes!!! Pink Overalls! Thank you! that was what I would advise too...either paint over it or remove the whole dry wall and start over again...much quicker either way :-)

Summer of 2009 I spent removing paneling and then stripping 3-6 layers of wallpaper (often with paint between layers) off plaster. I will say, plaster is far easier to strip than drywall. If it's on drywall, no go. I stripped wallpaper off walls in the living room, dining room, kitchen, foyer, vestibule, stairwell, and four bedrooms. I used the score and spray method and it worked very well. Buy yourself a good scraper and several additional blades. I've not used a steamer for wallpaper, but for other things art related and they can burn easily.

I have walls that appear to have at least 3 layers of wallpaper and multiple coats of paint over lathe and plaster. The wallpaper is breaking away from the wall in brittle sheets in places, the rest staying firm to the wall. I've been advised to spackle over the wallpaper where it is coming off and repaint, but this feels like bad advice. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Also, advice from others who have successfully removed the painted wallpaper would be great.

Can anyone suggest a reasonable method to remove wallpaper that has been painted over?
Or can I successfully wallpaper over the painted wallpaper?
My home is older with plaster walls.

Hire your own or your neighbor's unemployed college kids. My boyfriend and I removed all the wallpaper (unsized) in my mom's house--living, dining and two bathrooms--one summer during college. It was a mess and a long tedious job. What she paid us was a steal for her and we thought we were rich by the end. And yes, beer is required.

The other thing that works great for removing wallpaper is Borax. Just dissolve it in really hot water and spray it on. I like the garden sprayer idea above! Wallpaper peels off easy!

My parents just revamped their bedroom, which included removing early 80s wallpaper. The shiny kind with the texture. Woof. We used warm water with white vinegar and would spray and scrape our way along. I enjoy it in a sick way. I guess it's the reward of how good it looks when it's gone. But there is some beautiful wallpaper out there and I wouldn't be opposed to using it someday when I own a place.

Amélie Poulain LOVES stripping off wallpaper. For the person with plaster walls - here in France, they say it's the wallpaper that holds the walls together. Could be worth wallpapering over if there aren't too many tears or rips in the old one :)

Forgot to mention our technique: Ripped off as much paper as possible by hand first and then used a home pesticide sprayer (worked amazing--long, consistent spray) with a mixture of hot water and purchased generic wallpaper stripper mix. Let it soak for a minute and then peeled it off. Followed up with wiping down the walls with a wet sponge to get rid of any excess glue. Voila!

What about the WORST of all offenders- painted over wallpaper? Our bathroom is just that. The first owners of our 1956 ranch wallpapered EVERYTHING (obviously), even the ceiling. The next owners started removing it, then got lazy and just painted over the rest. Now its bubbling up in spots because the bathroom is always humid from showers. What to do?!

Our previous house, which was almost 150 years old, was wallpapered over plaster from the day it was built. I removed the paper through the entire house down to the bare ( scratch coat) plaster. I couldn't even count the layers in some rooms (many also painted between layers). I had to use different methods on different layers, but the most reliable product was zep wallpaper remover with their paper tiger for scoring.

Wallpaper is one thing. PAINTED OVER wallpaper is a whole other animal. It should be against the building code to paint over wallpaper, because that is almost impossible to get off.

@GeorgeBeland funny! Beer helped me survive wallpaper removal a couple years ago too.

For those of you with the painted-over paper: still score and spray. You need to score to get the liquid (I'm a member of the vinegar camp) to penetrate through the paint and into the paper, and it will come off eventually. I had paper over paint over paper, and with a LOT of effort, it came off. Totally worth it in the end!

I have taken my fair share of wallpaper off walls.... I would consider wallpapering a wall for the dramatic effect however, I would probably go with an alternative just knowing how much work it is to remove it.

As for the painted wallpaper... I think I would just move.

I am currently in LOVE with the wallpaper in the picture above. I hope that wasn't the paper that was removed. Especially, I love the poodle (?) with the hat...and the lovely doggie/human expressions.

We bought a 1950's house that had wallpaper on the ceiling in most every room. Yuck. We tried a variety of solutions but found that the steamer (rented at Home Depot) was the only real solution. The steamer was definitely the ticket except for doing the ceiling because you can't hold the steam tray up to the ceiling without the hot water (formerly steam) pooling in the pan and dripping down onto your head or hands. So my husband fashioned a long "handle" of sorts by attaching two pieces of wood on either side of the handle and attaching a swivel broomstick handle. That way, you can press the steamer flush to the ceiling at an angle away from your head (not directly overhead) and it will steam the paper off. Add welder's gloves for complete protection!! I would suggest beer during work time and tequila with heating pad after :).

Ugh! I have horrible memories of scraping off painted over wallpaper! I swear there were at least two coats of paint and at least 7-8 layers of wallpaper as well as 2 layers of paper on the ceiling! The project took forever and looked great when it was completed, but....NEVER AGAIN!

My house was built in 1907. A few weeks ago I was stripping a 100+ years of paint off a doorframe using a heatgun when the WALL started to bubble. I pulled it off to discover wallpaper. Under plaster! So my walls are original plaster, 2 layers of wallpaper, multiple layers of paint, plaster, multiple layers of paint.

I have commenced taking the wall back to the original plaster using a heat gun (to soften the paint a bit) and sliding a medium width flat scraper under the paint. In most cases it is flips right off in palm-sized chunks. When I am done I'll work on sanding the walls smooth, then repairing holes and irregularities with joint compound AND FINALLY painting it robin egg blue.

I've had to put the project on hold until I can move my bed into my office. It is just too messy to sleep in the same (small) room.

It sounds like a lot of work, but I feel good knowing it's being done right instead of another band-aid. Also, the woodwork looks AMAZING, because now you can see the details.

I am really looking forward to the finished room, but it may be 5 or 6 months.

Removing wallpaper from two bathrooms made me hate it. I gave up on removing the last remaining wallpaper adhesive from the second bathroom myself. I later paid a new painter extra to finish that as part of painting most of my home's interior. He accepted the extra pay, then painted over the remaininng wallpaper adhesive, which was consistent with the rest of his cruddy work. Happily, I currently have an excellent painter who charges less.

When we bought our 1880s house, it had 13 different wallpaper patterns and 9 different kinds of wall-to-wall carpeting! Just thinking about it makes me cross-eyed ... and tired!

But the walls are all now painted lovely shades, and the hardwood floors revealed ... including a great parquet floor in the front hall. Exhausting, but worth it.

I've had good success with removing painted over wallpaper using a spray bottle of HOT water, a 3" wide putty knife and a propane torch. First, spray a section of the wall (about 4' square) with the water - the idea is to soak as much water into the paper and paint as possible. If the paper and paint are very thick, you might be able to just scrap off the top dry sections of it to get to the layer nearest the wall (especially if it's all old and cracked).

Then using the torch and knife, hold the torch to the wall until the paint starts to bubble and use the knife to scrap that section away. Keep the torch moving - don't let it sit in one place or you'll burn the paint and paper. I keep a fan running full force in the room because melting paint smells. I usually do this is strips - with the torch just ahead of the putty knife. Make sure you have something to scrap the wallpaper/paint mixture into - don't use the floor as melted paint stains! (I learned the hard way). This all will take awhile and it takes some time to get accustomed to handling the torch. Just keep the wall as wet as possible. I also have a large bucket of water with rags and sponges nearby too. No matter what, this is an awful job.
I have, on occasion, if it's drywall, just taken the entire wall down as it takes less time to demo it and then rehang drywall.

Melody 26: LOL, hilarious closing--knowing you're serious makes it even funnier!

The plaster walls in my living room, dining room, and bedroom are covered in vinyl wallpaper under about five layers of paint. The wallpaper itself is a dream to get off. I can jam a plastic putty knife under a seam and it falls off in huge sheets. It's actually kind of fun. I'm not looking forward to the glue removal portion of the program, however.

A word of caution: If you're going to paint over wallpaper, be aware that the paint could pull the wallpaper away from the wall, creating sags and pockets. This is what has happened in my apartment. And I'm not spending money to paint a wall covering that is falling off.

This might be a dumb question, but we have a room with painted over wallpaper and it appears our previous owners did a good job of painting because unless you are really, really close, you can't see the seams at all and there is no bubbling, peeling or cracking. Our problem is the paint color is a hideous brown that doesn't match with the furniture we have.

Can you paint over painted wallpaper?? What about wallpapering over painted wallpaper?

I'm trying to avoid the removal process if at all possible!

We removed wallpaper from the kitchen, bedroom and solarium of our condo with a rented steamer, and I've been using a spray bottle filled with hot water to take it off the walls in the bathroom (didn't want to rent the steamer again). I had to peel off the top "vinyl" wallpaper coat which came off in big strips, but the paper backing is tougher. I just soak the hell out of it, peel it off, then wash the remaining glue off with hot water. Elbow grease works every time.

Every room of my house had wallpaper in some form that I've removed. When we buy our next home, wallpaper might very well be in the "dealbreaker" category for me. Painted over wallpaper definitely is.

Steamer, wall paper remover, and time. Hardest thing to do is wait and let the chemicals and steam do their job.

I removed three layers of wallpaper from the 30's from walls and ceilings in my first house.

Score, spray, steam, relax, remove. Repeat endlessly. . . .

In our 1950's cape cod we discovered that the wallpaper in each room had a different composition that determined how easy/difficult it was to remove. The most vicious kind is the papery type that has no internal cohesion or strength. For that we needed a steamer to remove. The vinyl kind was a dream to remove - just peel the top layer off and remove the rest with hot water. That papery stuff, though, that should be illegal. It took us a month to steam it all off.

A couple of questions:

1. How many times is normal to "ding" the wall when scraping? I'm removing wallpaper in a small bathroom and I swear there are 50+ dings in the drywall that will need patching and I'm not even finished yet! :( Am I doing something wrong?

2. What about this new wallpaper that is out "paintable, textured wallpaper" ? After my bathroom experience, I am considering papering this over existing wallpaper in the foyer and then painting it (rather than removing more wallpaper). Any experience with this?

I used the paintable wallpaper in a different house and really liked it. I chose the all over textured type rather than a repeating pattern.

It's easy to paint after it's up and it hid a lot of flaws in the walls behind it. The hardest part (as in any wallpapering job) is getting the seams right.

mybaumshelter: you asked about painting over painted wallpaper. I don't have personal experience but a neighbor of mine did it about five years ago. I thought she was nuts BUT her dining room still looks good. She used Kinzers Bulls-Eye oil primer over the painted wallpaper. She said there is a Kinzers water-based primer also but you have to use the OIL based. Oil primer stinks like crazy - so you will need good ventilation. She used the oil primer - let it dry for 48 hours - then painted with SW Divine White. I have to say, her dining room looks beautiful and I can't tell that there is wallpaper underneath.

To remove painted wallpaper: score with wallpaper scorer tool, use steamer and scraper. No chemicals and minimal effort. Really it works. We just bought a house covered in painted woodchip wallpaper (think puffy 70's wallpaper that makes you want to poke your eyes out.) Removing the paper hasn't been our biggest problem- it's the cracked and damaged plaster that the wallpaper was hiding. Ugh.

My house was 80% wallpaper when I moved in. And not even the apparent kind - the tricky, looks like a painted wall kind. Walls, ceilings, plaster, drywall...you name it.

1. On plaster: I think just about anything will work if you have a good scoring tool and scraper. Just have patience.
2. On drywall: This was my first paper-removal experience and I still have nightmares. It was textured and painted over, and the wall underneath was in such awful shape I gave up.

So...I have no recommendations on how to removed painted wallpaper on drywall. One day I will summon my courage, take my trusty Paper Tiger, and give it another shot.

My sympathy to all of you. We're renovating a 1944 bungalow with up to 7 layers of wallpaper (so far). After countless "dings" and a big freakout I finally gave up and ripped off the drywall to the studs in some areas. Don't know what I'll do with the wp'd ceilings...

We have a 1937 Art Deco with curving walls and coved ceilings. We've found that as part of the original plaster structure a very sturdy type of wallpaper was put up (kind of like a canvas). We believe this was to hold everything in place and keep any cracks from showing. Several rooms had additional layers of alternating paint and wallpaper. Consulted wallpaper expert about removing & her advice was to plaster over it as long as the existing wallpaper was still strongly adhered. (Any loose parts we ripped off). We hired someone to do the plaster work in 4 different rooms & it looks AMAZING. Going on 2 years now & no problems + no cracks anywhere in my 80+ year house due to wallpaper underneath.

2 years after struggling to remove our bathroom wallpaper (which someone had put up with something other than wallpaper paste - a no-no!) I just helped a friend take down properly-hung wallpaper that came right down like a dream. The trick was score it, spray it with diluted liquid fabric softener, and then steam. The stuff seriously almost took itself down.

I loathe wallpaper. Just sayin'

It is possible to paint parts or the entirety of your house on your own. Learning all the mentioned tips and techniques above can give you an assurance that you would be very successful with your painting project. Thank you for the information