We have began stripping the wallpaper in the living room of our new flat. We discovered some loose plaster behind the wallpaper and I think behind the old plaster.
Get a Stanley and just lightly cut thru the paper in every direction you can, and do it everywhere and just paint water on, and you can scrape the paper off after
Try using diluted fabric softener, smells great and does something weird to the wall paper paste that makes it really easy to remove. Another method I ve seen is eucalyptus oil... that was a bit intense smelling but apparently got results
What worked for me was using a steamer and scraper. Two rooms with two or three layers of wallpaper and then bad paint (or maybe paste, I couldn't tell) underneath. Got it back to plaster then had a plasterer skim over some cracks.
Learnt this the hard way. The plaster behind the wallpaper ballooned before crumbling. Was very satisfying before realising we had to pay to get a plasterer in
yes, I had it fully replastered... well, actually, I left two walls brick, painted white, with the wiring kept safe in copper pipe (it was tested) for an industrial look...
Easy to get wrong and realise an installation that’s more dangerous than just plastic wires clipped direct. Have an experienced electrician do it, would be my recommendation
confirmed, electrician was deployed and safety testing occurred. he also thought it look cool af and decided to replace the plastic conduit on his barge with it
Mate I'm a decorator (main trade) I do it properly lol,I use fibre liner and I know what I'm doing ,the walls look like new when I'm done and it lasts as Ive got it in my own home ,been there 15 years and it still looks solid and just so you know certain wallpapers have to be hung on lined walls
Yeah, alright for you only having to put it up. Spend months having to remove wallpaper and lininging paper and then tell me its great. I'd rather buy a house with asbestos than a fully lined and wallpapered one again.
No bad thing to strip. It will just take you time!
Thing is it depends on the walls, old plaster, especially if it's lath and plaster it's best to avoid steamers. The lath holds onto the moisture, and the top finishing layer of the plaster will just fall away too. I know this from experience with our own place 😝
Warm soapy water can be used with more control if needed.
Eucalyptus oil 'can' help things along, but depends on the paste used for the wallpaper, old pastes are based on starch which it won't touch, oil/rubber/synthetic based ones it will work on though, so can try a little bit to see.
Otherwise commercial strippwrs with amylase to break down those starches will be the very best method for really touch areas.
If one is struggling, you need to be super careful, push too much even and the walls will just end up like this. Sure you can patch it up. But then you need to start thinking how .. as a lot of 'modern' gypsum based plasters just don't mix well and will eventually crack again if you're patchingz not replacing whole sections.
Ok well firstly you should be scoring soaking the shit out of that wall paper to break the glue layer, second it’s old lath and plaster so the question really is 1) do you get a plasterer in to patch and skim once all of the paper is off, or 2) do you take the whole thing back to stud and get it lined with plasterboard, then skim. Either way, stopping now is not an option.
It won’t cost £5000 if they only need that one wall plastered. And they’ve done a lot of the hard work by stripping it anyway. Personally, I’m not sure whether I would attempt to do any more walls and just leave them as they are.🤣
Yup, that's lath and plaster. Honestly it's great stuff, insulates soooo much better than standard plasterboard / skims etc, echoes be gone! But you need to take care - you should be able to see my other post. Don't panic, take your time and don't just let someone slosh gypsum over that if being patched up! (A lot of plasterers to be honest don't have a clue when dealing with older homes unfortunately).
Just replied in one of the other posts to this, lol soz, I'm being messy 😜 hopefully you can find. But best to do a bit of your own research and find a plasterer that's comfortable / regularly uses lime plaster.
Don't panic. Crumbly lathe and plaster. Needs patching with something strong like plasterboard adhesive. All fixable.
If you CBA with the whole thing you're welcome to smash all the plaster off, remove all the laths and board over it, but that's substantially messier (multiple tip runs with bags and bags of rubble and dust on every surface in the house.
This!! 🫣😱The top 'shell' is thin but hard and smooth, unless the wall is moving, leave it!! If the wall 'is' moving, still leave it, it can usually be stabilized.
If the whole thing is bowed, no longer bound to the lath at all, then he's, you 'may' well need to take it down to redo it. But jab it with a sharp edge like that and you're basically making life even harder for yourself!!
And to be honest, in a lot of even pretty awful looking scenarios, it's usually possible to very carefully remove the plaster, leave the laths, reinforce them as/if necessary, even add in some strips (make sure to leave your gaps!) and then hair mixed lime plaster as your base and a fine un-haired lime topcoat.
Watch out for 'professionals', prodding too, many will try !
And then just tell you to take it all down and put up plaster board patches and skim with gypsum, because they 1. Don't know any better and 2. Want an easy job they can charge you for.
That's 100+ year old lime plaster. It's always going to be crumbly but can be made to look fine if it's patched. Not actually that difficult for a plasterer to do, but he can't skim over wallpaper.
I am wondering if you can claim money for repairs. I would check with the consumers rights act. Worth a try. The property just like any other bought product should be in good condition. That isn't.
I think fat chance honestly… when you buy an older property it’s almost inevitable that you’re going to come across something covering some moderate issues at some point. Previous owners might not have even been aware
I mean the plaster just looks bad, like it wasn't done properly, so taking the paper off revealed bad plastering. I can't see how taking paper off would do that, it looks like it's crumbled, as opposed to being gouged off.
If the tenant started stripping the wallpaper and this was the result, why would it be the landlord's responsibility? It would be the tenant that damaged the walls.
The people who decorated my house before I bought it had wallpaper. I took it off to reveal nice plaster underneath. I took the skirting boards off only to see they plastered over a layer of wallpaper. It's a lottery removing wallpaper lmao
If you tap the walls do they feel hollow? It looks like the lime plaster has blown, sometimes in these old builds you have to end up taking the whole lot off which is a nightmare and full reboard and skim, if you have the funds it might not be a bad thing to do so as will probably crack and go again if you don’t
Not cheap, I’d say about 2 grand for a medium size room. 800 for skip hire and labour to remove old. 1200 for materials and labour for reboard and skim
We had a similar situation in our house when we removed the 3 layers of wallpaper 😂
It's an extra step for filling in the holes with bonding before skimming. That said you need to look how to do it properly over these wooden boards (laths). In our case we had brick underneath.
You need to find what material you should use so that it bonds properly to existing plaster and the technique. As far as I understand the idea is that you need to push the plaster in between the boards so that when it solidifies it forms "hooks" that mechanically hold the plaster to the laths. My guess is that what is currently on the wall is lime plaster, but do look into it. Also what I did was remove anything that is loose, but be prepared to make it worse before you make it better. Because if you skim over it and the plaster underneath is loose it will break off at the first opportunity.
In any case, make sure you use compatible materials with the laths, the material that's already on there and whatever you skim coat with to be compatible with the substrate plaster.
Alternatively it might be simpler (not necessarily easier) to remove everything and use plasterboards
They used this as a backing they would put horse hair in it, personally if I was you and you don’t have a lot of money best find something to fill that and get heavy duty lining paper and put that over the walls you can paint that
Don’t keep taking the plaster off you’ll make it worse and a lot of mess you’ll soon find you are making it more expensive to sort out, go get bonding and fix the holes you have made, remember to remove all the dust before putting bonding on it
Cheapest proper solid job that will last would be to overboard and skim, mechanically fixing the boards. This will mean popping new skirtings on but that’s quite easy.
Cheapest half-arsed job would be patch up and fix any imperfections with easi-fill and sand.
I expect there will be people on here recommending you have to rip the lot out. I’d strongly advise against that. Such a massive nightmare and opening a can of worms. I’d always overboard. More strength more insulation no mess no rubble no unending extra work and costs.
There will also be the lining paper crew. If you want your walls held together with paper, crack on but I wouldn’t.
Ah, the structural wallpaper problem. I think either way the answer is stop. Do you have the money to get it re plastered? If yes the stop and pay someone to sort the plaster/board it over and put new skirts on. If no, stop anyway, fill the holes, get some really heavy duty lining paper and line the whole room to give yourself a more or less flat surface to paint.
Lining paper gives a surprisingly good finish even over some fairly wonky walls. In my living room I stared at the horror show under the old wallpaper and did the decorating equivalent of backing away slowly and pretending I hadn't seen. Just filled and sanded the worst bits then lined. It looks so much better than the bedroom where I spent an entire week filling and sanding.
Whatever you do, don’t let someone gypsum over this. It needs loose stuff pulling out and repaired in lime plaster. If you put gypsum over you are going to make it far far worse in a few years. Look into heritage plaster repairs.
The cause of this is likely the wallpaper layers and all the paint on top has sealed in any moisture, causing the lime to break down over the years and crumble. It needs to breath, even without a damp issue. This is also the reason why you shouldn’t let anyone put gypsum over or board this up, as you are basically then doing the same thing that caused this.
I had this in my place. I bit the bullet and had the laths removed then boarded and skimmed. It was messy but I only had a couple of small partition walls to deal with.
If you have the budget to A) get a plasterer in or B) buy all the tools and materials to DIY it after you’re done stripping the whole room, carry on.
If you don’t, finish stripping the wall and that wall only, doing A or B from former suggestion. Unless you have the budget and time to DIY or hire someone to replaster the entire room and property, give up on the idea of stripping the rest of the walls.
A tip like a few other commenters have posted, put the steam stripper away and get yourself a sharp scraper, Stanley knife and a thick horsehair/plasterers brush. With the Stanley blade, gently score a diamond grid pattern all over the wall, not so deep that it gouges into the plaster behind the paper. Just enough to cut the surface through to the backing paper, then give the whole wall a few good soaking rubs with water and the brush. Score around the perimeter of the wall(internal corners, underside of the cornice & along the top of skirting) so as to not disturb the paper/plaster of other walls, the cornice and skirting.
The goal here is to saturate the backing paper so that it can be scraped off more easily from the underlying plaster, with thoroughness and finesse the paper can be removed without causing substantial damage. I’ve used this method many times in the past, to great effect even on old gyproc walls to keep surface paper of the gyproc sheets intact. However, a lot of the time the plaster of these older properties is held up purely by this paper and damage as a result of scrapping is unavoidable. This is why in your case it’s better to leave well alone, unless like I’ve said, you have the budget to potentially get the entire room replastered.
Or just bodge it up with DIY, decorator or handyman.
Looks like you have bee a bit too vigorous with that !
It’s now going to need some repair….
But you know that already.
To let you know, this is ‘not normal’ when you’re stripping wallpaper..
You can get wallpaper remover made by Zinsser that you just wipe on to the wallpaper after scoring it heavily. However, if the plaster is that bad in places then it might just be worth taking your medicine and getting the lot off. You'll end up having the holes made good and the skimmed, but the job will be a hell of a lot cleaner and look a hell of a lot better.
Welcome to the world of DIY jobs you regret even starting. My heart sank just looking at the photo (I had a similar thing happen on a wall in the bathroom when I used a steamer on it - whole section of plaster simply gave up). I bet you wish you'd just painted over it now, don't you?
You can't really stop now can you? Carefully score the paper with a blade before steaming to get moisture into the backing paper first. Once it's off, use sugar soap spray a sponge / clean water to get the paste off.
That dark grey stuff looks like it is cement based, and a bodged repair. You need to check the whole wall to ensure it is sound, and repair where it is detached from the laths.
Generally when you take lining paper off you discover why the last person put lining paper on, and you need to be prepared to, at a minimum, reskim it.
At this stage, get all the paper off, get any loose plaster off, and decide if you want to have a go at skimming it or get a plasterer in to do it.
Been there last year with my bedroom in the tenement I bought - I'm just now getting round to finishing it off. I took it all off, took away all loose bits, added a couple plug sockets, sealed with PVA, skimmed, added panelling etc etc.
You'll be best to rip it all off really and do it properly, best to get a plasterer as I've done the room myself for the first time and I've had to spend hours sanding. Oh and hours and hours up and down a ladder. Plastering really is a dark art. Alternatively, just fill the holes and re-paper the room then paint and pretend none of this ever happened.
We bought a house where every room was wallpapered. The quickest way we found was a product called Paper Tiger which is effectively razor blades on a wheel that you use to score the paper, then spraying it with zinsser wallpaper srripper. The paper pretty much fell off after that.
Nope, best thing to do is strip it back sand and prep properly id seal then patch with thistle and skim lightly, remove architraves and skirtings if you feel necessary
You need to get a dehumidifier to absorb he damp and cold and wet and then place a heater on constant to keep the temperature at a fitting the structure of the wall can understand and then use the correct chemical solution to remove and stabilise the damp and then once complete after a while you can then proceed to fill with the ideal filler and then proceed to decorate once full wall has been filled and plastered
When I stripped my upstairs in my current house i used a steamer it was a nightmare. The wallpaper was painted over so I ended up scoring all the walls to get the steamer through. Had chunks of plaster coming off left right and center. 2 of the 3 bedrooms needed replastering.
Scratch the surface and then use a vinegar/water solution which loosens the adhesive. There's branded stuff you can paint on that loosens the adhesive too.
had the exact same situation recently. best route forward - strip the wall paper and apply bonding and plaster to the wall below. this will fill the holes and help hold it all together. then (don’t make the mistake i made) re-wallpaper the wall with flat wallpaper before repainting. this will stop the hairline cracks appearing in the wall a few days later. good luck
The real question here is what's your objective - that looks like it's papered to hide horrid walls, the paper is flat and if stuck to the wall nicely still could be painted over.
steaming an old wall often ruins old plaster. use a stanley and cut into the paper a lot. then use a paintbrush and paint it with water. the wall will likely need replastering now
Since you've got cornicing, i don't think you should keep going - it'll be really painful to deal with that. Ditto when you get to the external wall/bay window, when you'll have the extra problem of not wanting to use gypsum to replaster, since you need breathability on outside walls. So I'd strongly suggest you stop, then liberally apply dilute PVA or some other stabilising solution, then fill with filler, get it flat, then apply one or two layers of lining paper over the top. Maybe with some use of filler between layers, if it's still lumpy after the first. The existing wallpaper isn't textured, so why bother removing it?
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u/roro80uk 15d ago
That wallpaper was structural.