One Room Challenge – Week 2: Wallpaper Hell

Welcome back to week 2 of the One Room Challenge! This past week of the One Room Challenge has been…a challenge. The first reason has been the unusual schedule of having to work on the room during the day because my daughter has to sleep in the room at night, and that’s been tricky as I have many other things needing done in daylight hours.

However, the biggest challenge BY FAR has been stripping the wallpaper.

For the entire past week I’ve been strictly removing wallpaper. Usually hours each day.

My personal goal was to have this entire room stripped by the end of week 1 for the ORC.

Would you like to see how far I’ve come along?

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Yup. That’s it.

I’ve spent hours on this one teeny section of wall and…It’s. Not. Yielding.

I’ve removed wallpaper before, and somehow this wallpaper has been worse then when we removed 4 layers (that were also painted over) from the dining room! All I needed for the dining room was a mix of hot water and vinegar in a spray bottle!

The wallpaper in Miss E’s room is only 2 layers thick!

So I suppose this begs the question: How many products and tools have I experimented with over this week to get the dang suckers off the wall?

EVERYTHING.

I’ve gone over the surface with a wallpaper scorer, used hot water and vinegar soaking spray and hot wet rags held against the wall, steamer with water and steamer with 50/50 fabric softener and water…I’ve used Piranha and DIF and Chomp sprays…Rustoleum paper scraper, metal scrapers, plastic scrapers…EVERYTHING! (I’m lucky my mom had half this stuff so I didn’t have to buy it all!)

This 1990’s throwback wallpaper has had everything thrown at it, and yet, like Rose from the Titanic, it’s holding onto the plaster for dear life and declaring, “…I’ll never let go!”.

If there’s anything I have learned from this to pass along to y’all for all your future wallpaper stripping endevours, it’s that not all wallpapers (or glue) are created the same, and you may have to experiment and be ready to pivot with what products you use to remove them.

The method that was working best out of all the things I tried was the little clothing steamer. However, such a little steamer was only able to do a 4-inch space at a time.

Not good. Obviously.

Therefore, unless I planned to be working on that crazy stuck-on wallpaper until the end of 2020, I had to go bigger.

At first I looked into renting a steamer, but at $20/day and knowing I’d need 473,897 days, I nixed that plan and looked up how much they cost.

The Wagner 715 Wallpaper Power Steamer was listed for $50 and had great reviews. Boom. Sold.

I got the steamer two days ago. When I returned from my trip to Home Depot I immediately set it up and within 15 minutes it was hot enough to start steaming with.

It was an improvement in terms of surface area for sure, and scraping the wallpaper did go a little faster. The layer of paper and glue closest to the plaster were still being a vicious little monster and would require me to hold the steamer flat against it for a full 5 minutes before it’d start to soften that darn glue enough.

My method as I work has become this:

Score a square foot area. Hold the steamer plate against the area for a few minutes and then peel away the first wallpaper layer (the easiest layer by far). Score the area again and hold the steamer 5 more minutes…and then scrape my arm off trying to get the 2nd layer and glue off as I hold the steamer plate in a nearby scored area to get it soft next. Then repeat. Often going over the same place several times with the steamer before getting it to all come off in that area.

Little personal review of the steamer – read on past if you don’t care, hehe: The manual for the Wagner steamer with the water up to the max amount says it will steam continuously for 70 minutes, but I had it going 60 minutes with it filled half-way, so that was impressive.

I do find it a little inconvenient that in order to get it to stop steaming I have to unplug it. A button would be nice. But not a big deal. Just be sure you have a long stretch of time to keep steaming the walls when working with it.

Anywho, that’s been my week of “progress”. Essentially all I did was a ton of experimenting with methods for wallpaper stripping. Hoping that this coming week will prove to be more fruitful with actual visual progress…and that I won’t be looking at several more WEEKS of removing wallpaper as I fear. Though at my current rate it seems almost inevitable.

Good thing she’s cute. ;) #worthit

I am also doing crown molding and picture rail and need to figure out whether to paint or stain the moldings.

Here’s my nice hubby holding a stained picture rail against the wall for me so I can attempt to decide. Do keep in mind that there will be crown molding above it.

One day I’m leaning towards staining, and the next paint. The rest of the trim in the room is stained, but 1) do I want the moldings to stand out, or 2) have them be colored the same as the wall paint color to make the design more cohesive? (or even a contrasting color?). Would love feedback on that if y’all would be so kind! :)

Sad as my progress is after this first week of the ORC, I’m hopeful that there will be more changes happening in the room over this next week with the new steamer. Wish me luck!

If you haven’t joined in already, come see me on Instagram where I post videos in Stories every day and we can chat! @livinginafixerupper

Thanks for following along despite my personal goal failure of the past week! I look forward to having some redemption next week for you!

Jump back to see the design and plans in One Room Challenge Week 1!

Week 1 / Week 2 / Week 3 / Week 4 / Week 5 / Week 6 / Week 7