FULL STEAM AHEAD

‘Your house was very small, with woodchip on the wall…’ sang Pulp.  And so is ours.  Getting stuck into ridding the walls of this dreadful woodchip paper.  It’s everywhere – on the walls, on the ceilings, it’s a miracle the toilet seat wasn’t papered in the stuff!

 

Ban woodchip now!

First to go under the stripping knife was the guest bedroom.  Being the smaller of the two upstairs bedrooms it didn’t take the pair of us too long to tame this beastie.  It’s full steam ahead to do battle with the wallpaper warlock. 

 

Small bedroom stripped

You can see where the wall was previously patched

Now being four foot nothing tall when I strip wallpaper it’s like Bilbo Baggins meets Changing Rooms but with only the bottom half of the wall getting tackled. The other half having the advantage of height strips everything over shoulder level.  This tag team approach works well as long as you both start in different corners so you’re not tripping up over each other.

 

Give your wall a jolly good soaking

Then get stuck in with the steamer

A word here on the safety of stripping with other people, it’s a steamy business.  Make sure you have plenty of ventilation in the room so you’re not overcome by the sauna-like conditions.  Remember steam is the product of very hot water and it hurts like hell when you get the odd drip on the hand (ouch!) and when you lean in close to the steam pad it’s like having a Karcher facial.  Have Government scientists considered wallpaper steamers as a means of Covid cleansing?  They could be quite effective in the war against germs.

As I’ve already mentioned, woodchip wallpaper is the stuff of the devil and a bugger to get off especially with several coats of paint on it.  Ban woodchip now!  I’m losing the will to live just looking at it.  Come on, just think how much better the walls are going to look without the stuff so stop whining and crack on.  

Get your kit together to save time – steamer, water jug or empty milk container for refilling, stripping knives, stepladder, scorer, wallpaper stripping liquid, bucket and portable radio tuned in to Planet Rock. 

 

Zinsser DIF the stuff of legends

Start by scoring the surface of the woodchip paper with a criss-cross network of lines.  This helps the steam penetrate the paper more effectively but don’t do this too deeply as you’ll mark the plaster underneath.  Dilute your wallpaper stripping liquid (Zinsser DIF) in a bucket and slosh it on the scored paper.  Leave for 15 mins to cook whilst you fill up the steamers then air guitar around the room to some headbanging rock tunes.  Hell yeah!  Repeat process at least 3 times. 

When steam’s up, you can now take out your angst on the walls.  Woodchip paper seems to strip in almost 2 parts; the upper paper layer and the bottom ‘granola’ layer.  Once you’ve peeled back the paper layer, the granola part requires only a gentle steam and little effort to remove. 

 

Add milk for instant breakfast

Be careful not to leave the steam pad on the paper for too long either as sometimes this can cause the plaster wall beneath it to crack especially if the plaster is not in a good condition or old like ours.  Good job we’re getting the walls re-plastered.  I’m beginning to see why they papered these rooms in the first place, there are so many cracks it’s only the wallpaper holding the whole house together.

This is what you find under the  paper