LivingEtc: Wallwik wallpaper stripping system

The jury is back on the Wallwik wallpaper stripper and we are DELIGHTED! I thought I would make this a longer post than usual to give anyone that's interested the benefit of our tips and to offer any help or answers.

Basically, we are renovating a 1960's duplex in London whose ground floor has been totally covered in thick anaglypta wallpaper, (overpainted)since around the early 70's. Even the doors have been covered using what appears to be industrial strength adhesive. Grim, grim, grim...After an hour with a conventional steamer we had got a pathetic amount of the stuff off and were ready to give up the ghost but thought we would give the Wallwik a go.

Although I wouldn't say it's an "easy" procedure, it is incredibly labour saving and comparatively hassle free. The hardest part I have to say is the scoring of the wallpaper that you have to do prior to laying on the sheets. They give you a special and quite nifty little tool to do this as using a stanley knife usually results in damage to the plaster beneath which kind of defeats the object of the exercise. Because anaglypta (and woodchip which this is also excellent for) is so thick and "blown" it can be quite hard to score the paper adequately to allow the solution to permeate. Unfortunately you do reap what you sow and the more you score the better the result. After that it really is plain sailing, though. They recommend leaving the sheets on for 20 minutes but we found an hour was more realistic. Every 15 mins we re-wet the wall using the pressure sprayer that they supply just to keep the sheets nice and soaked. While you wait you can score other walls, have tea, etc etc, anything, infact, except keep checking the darn thing!

After an hour, we removed the sheets and found that the wallpaper underneath was pretty sodden through. It then came off REALLY easily; not in whole sheets like some people have testified, but damn near, damn near. The best thing was the wall was perfect underneath and there were only little bits of the backing paper left on the wall which we wet again and scraped off with complete ease.

Bearing in mind the extent of the problem and the fact that we were clearing a 16ft x 15ft room we got it done in about 4 hours. I think it would have been quicker if we had ordered more of the sheets as we ran out of them and had to wait till one wall was done before we could reuse them. For a smaller room, though, the professional kit, at £50, would be perfectly adequate, I think and, because you reuse the sheets, is probably cheaper than hiring a steamer.

Another consideration is that you don't get all sweaty and argumentative over who is gonna get the steamer and who's on scraper detail! It was really pleasant to use and completely unmessy, apart from the water aspect. We are dumping the carpets so this didn't bother us but it can get quite wet.

Another thing I would recommend is investing in the widest bladed knife/scraper that you can as it makes the taking off the paper really quick, like shearing a sheep - LOL. And of course, you aren't picking up jigsaw sized pieces of paper for ever afterwards; it's all large slabs which makes clearing up a lot easier.

Anyway, thanks for bearing with; any questions I'll do my best, but we really do recommend it. Kladoink, get it on that woodchip now!!!!

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