Stripping Wallpaper In East Grinstead, West Sussex, The Life Of a Professional Painter & Decorator.

Last week I was tasked with stripping this large lounge of all it's wood chip wallpaper in East Grinstead West sussex, wood chip is a decorators cryptonite, we don't like it very much!

I started with my Zinsser paper tiger perforating the wallpaper so that water could be applied with Zinsser Diff, this is a solution added to a water sprayer to aid in the breakdown of glue and enzymes so that hopefully the paper comes off the wall with ease, after leaving the solution on the wall for 20 minutes I then tried to get the paper off, it would not work, I then soaked and soaked the walls and tried again for many hours, still it would not budge, the only alternative was to strip the top layer of wood chip with a heavy duty 6" blade and then wet the backing to strip it off the wall, this worked but believe it or not this room took 2,5 days to get it all off the walls.

After stripping all the wallpaper in the room, I then found plenty of blown plaster and cracks so the best way forward was to get a plasterer in to skim the wall so that the room has a nice smooth crack free surface to work with, I'm going back in to paint & decorate this room next week starting with a mist coat ( a watered down layer of paint to seal the plaster) then 2x coats of emulsion paint on top.

I will update you when it's complete.

East Grinstead Painter & Decorator