Wallpaper Removal near you

A wallpaper steamer produces continuous wet heat at close range, and the walls it is used on are full of cables, switches and outlets. Power to the room should be isolated at the switchboard before any wetting starts, and outlets and switches should be masked and kept dry. Steam also gets into wall cavities through gaps around fittings, so the area around a switch plate is where the most caution is needed and the least is usually exercised.

Steam itself burns. It escapes from the edges of a steaming plate and rises straight onto the hand holding it, and a full plate held against a ceiling puts that steam directly above the operator. Gloves, eye protection and a working position that keeps the face out of the plume are the basics, along with never leaving a hot unit unattended in a room where children can reach it.

Then there is the ladder question. Stripping above head height means reaching, twisting and pulling while standing on something, which is a poor combination. SafeWork NSW treats manual tasks involving sustained or awkward posture, sustained force and repetitive movement as hazardous, and stripping a high wall is all three. A platform rather than a ladder, and a job broken into sessions, is the practical control.

The most common bad outcome is not torn wallpaper but a torn wall. Plasterboard has a paper face that gives the sheet much of its surface strength, and if a covering was hung directly onto unsealed board, the adhesive bonds to that face. Soaking softens the sheet as readily as the paper, and the scraper then lifts board face, leaving a fuzzy, uneven surface that will not take paint without a full skim.

You can usually tell early. Strip a test patch and look at the back of what comes off: a clean paper backing means the wall was sealed, while a layer of grey or brown board face means it was not. If it is the second, change the approach. That means gentler wetting, less scraping, and accepting that the wall will need skimming and possibly a lining paper before it is painted.

The other frequent problem is residue. Old paste left on a wall shows through paint as patchy sheen, and can reactivate under a water-based topcoat and cause the new coating to slide. Washing the wall down properly, then letting it dry fully and sealing it, is the step that gets skipped when a job is running late and the one that causes the callback.

Not every smooth internal wall in Australia is plasterboard. The national asbestos product register records asbestos cement flat sheeting used for interior wall and ceiling linings prior to 1990, describes its surface appearance as generally like plasterboard, and warns that nine and twelve millimetre panels can be mistaken for plasterboard unless assessed by a professional, particularly if painted or wallpapered. It notes that sheet joints were sometimes covered with cover moulding, wooden battens or paper strips before painting, and that cut edges may expose fibres when the material is cut, drilled or demolished.

Wallpaper removal is exactly the situation that page describes, because the covering has been hiding the surface. The safe order of work is to establish what the lining is before using any scraper, sander, wire brush or power tool on it, and only a laboratory test at an accredited facility can settle that. Age and appearance are reasons to test, not reasons to conclude.

The second unknown is the paint under the paper. LeadSmart NSW states that lead paint was used in most homes built in Australia before 1970, and advises that if the paint is in good condition it should be left alone or painted over, with wet sanding and wet scraping named as the safest methods of preparing a surface or removing old lead paint. Where old paint must be disturbed, it calls for an AS 1716-approved respirator or mask with P1 or P2 filters and coveralls, an industrial or HEPA vacuum that is not the household vacuum, and waste sealed in heavy-duty plastic and taken to an approved part of the local waste facility.

Stripping to bare wall is the right answer when the covering releases cleanly and the lining underneath is sound. It gives the best surface for paint and removes every future adhesion problem, and it is the cheapest of the three options when it works.

Skimming is what you do when stripping has damaged the wall or when the surface under the paper is uneven, textured or patched. A thin coat of setting compound over the whole wall, sanded and sealed, produces a flat paintable surface and is a plasterer's job rather than a painter's. It adds time and dust but it is a permanent fix.

Lining over the top, either with a lining paper or a new covering, is the pragmatic option when the existing paper is firmly stuck, is not the problem, and the lining underneath is questionable. It avoids disturbing what is there, which in a pre-1990 house can be the safest choice as well as the cheapest. What it cannot do is fix a covering that is lifting, bubbling or damp, because anything applied over a failing surface fails with it.