5 Tricks To Removing Wallpaper in McLean, VA
Sometimes, when you’re thinking about updating your home interior’s look, there will be one thing that stands in between you and a good interior paint job is wallpaper.
Of course, wallpaper can be incredibly difficult to remove, but if you go into it prepared and have some advice on your side, you can get it done.
With this being the case, here are five tricks to removing wallpaper in McLean, VA.
1. Larger Rooms Benefit From Renting Steaming Equipment
Of course, you should understand how removing wallpaper removal works – you moisten the glue underneath the wallpaper, which allows you to remove the wallpaper.
While you can, of course, use a misting bottle or even a moist cloth in some cases to moisten glue, in the cases of larger rooms, it may be a good idea to get some steaming equipment to help you get it done more quickly.
Since higher quality steaming equipment can cost a bit of money, it may behoove you to rent it over the course of the period of removing the wallpaper — it’s not something you’re going to need to use more than once usually. There seems like no point in outright purchasing such equipment.
2. Easily Cleaned Wallpaper Needs Extra Work To Remove
When you have the kind of wallpaper that is easy to clean — this can often be found in areas where you will find kids running around with hands dirty from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — it can be a bit more difficult to remove.
When you consider how part of the process involves getting moisture underneath the wallpaper, and this sort of wallpaper is designed to be wiped clean with a wet cloth, it will take an extra step to get the moisture to the glue underneath.
Specifically, you will need to use a wallpaper piercing tool to gently get small holes in the surface to enable the water or even steam to get to the glue to moisten it.
3. Do Not Try To Moisten All Of The Wallpaper At Once
Though there are two basic steps to removing the wallpaper — moistening the glue underneath the wallpaper and then removing it –you might think that you can moisten all of the wallpaper and then remove it all.
This would not be a good idea, particularly if you have a larger room where the wallpaper needs to be removed.
Instead, you will need to take one section at a time and make sure that each is properly prepared before removing the wallpaper for that area.
4. See If The Wallpaper Is Easily Removed First
Before you make all of the effort to steam or otherwise moisten the wallpaper, it is worth first trying to simply peel the wallpaper off of the wall to see if it is the kind of wallpaper that easily peels.
Some wallpapers are made to be applied and removed from your walls easily, as one does a sticker from a sticker album — and though they are meant to be temporary, they can sometimes be left up for years.
To see if one wallpaper is the kind that is easily removed, one needs only to reach one of the seams of the wallpaper and to loosen it with a putty knife — and then to pull downward.
If it comes right off with ease, you’ve got it made, and you won’t have to put forth too much effort to remove the rest of the wallpaper.
5. Old Credit Cards Scrape Well
There are many tools meant for scraping wallpaper off of your walls, but one that is lesser known is the credit card — an old credit card that is no longer in use, that is.
The point of using an old credit card instead of a tool that is meant for removing wallpaper from the wall is that you will be less likely to damage the wall itself if you use the credit card.
This is because the card, being made of plastic, will be more gentle as far as wallpaper removal goes.