About a year and a half into homeownership, the wallpaper has finally met its fate. It is the end of an era... 5 layers of floral, splatter paint, and southwestern printed era.
The many layers of paint and wallpaper practically fell from the wall, except for the very first layer of paper. In about 10% of the total area, we got down to plaster, by just scraping the paper off (gently) while dry. With a a solution of 1/2 water and 1/2 fabric softener, the last of the paper scrapes up with a bit of elbow grease. The plaster, in general, looks very good.
We also discovered that behind the wallpaper was the last of the moisture from our insulation installation. Fortunately, there is no indication of mold (by smell or by my allergy-powered detector system), and the wallpaper comes off even more easily on these walls. In these areas, the dry-scraping-straight-to-plaster accounts for about 35% of the area.
The following pictures don't include the last shots of where we left off, tonight. We have a patch of plaster exposed that is about 2.5'x4." I will do the math for the total work hours per square foot of wallpaper removal, soon.
East Wall
South Wall
Some paper samples:
