How to Remove Wallpaper Paste/Contact Cement (The Guest Bedroom)

Happy Thursday everyone! I hope this blog post finds you well. :) Quick update about the sale we went to last weekend - was not quite as exciting as other clear out sales/giveaways we have been two but we nabbed a few things! Picked up a cement planter and a really unique frame.


This was Micheal's choice, I want to paint it but he vetoed that, boo!


This was my pick; I thought it was pretty unique when looking at vintage frames. I'm thinking of painting and hoping it'll go with one of the vintage posters we have found.
Now to the fun stuff! Removing wallpaper! Oh wait, that's not fun. First, let me say if you happened across this page by searching "how to remove wallpaper"... I'm so sorry. It is such an awful task, particularly wallpaper that has been up for decades.

Wallpaper can be applied a few different ways including putting wallpaper paste on the back of wallpaper or for thicker wallpaper they used to use contact cement on the wall (applied with a roller) and then put up the wallpaper. I was hoping to do a true "how to remove wallpaper" post with all the wetting, peeling, and scraping that is usually involved. However, my wallpaper literally pulled RIGHT off the wall. I was initially all "boo-yah in your face wallpaper!!" Until I realized there was a very thick layer of contact cement left on the wall with no nice paper attached to it. Well crap.

Here's where we started:


Lovely thatch wallpaper as an accent wall.
Before I started the whole "wet and peel" process I wanted to see what happened when you pulled since I was worried that the wallpaper was actually kinda waterproof. And this is what happened...


So left with hardened 40-50 year old glue. Awesome. Enter lots of scraping and elbow grease.
So if you are trying to remove old contact cement or wallpaper glue from a wall grab your spray bottle, a sponge, a bucket, a scraper of some sort, and a LOT of paper towels.

1. Wet the glue and let it sit for about 5 minutes.

2. After your 5 minute wait, begin scraping. It's a wet and nasty job. Sorry.
   
   
3. Once you get a space scraped off take your sponge and bucket of water and wipe off the remaining residue.
   
   
4. Wash Scrape, rinse, and repeat! Until you get a glue free wall.
   

We also had another one of those "what were they thinking" moments when we took out the "patch" where the door had made a hole in the wall.

The hole goes all the way through... and they used a CUP and PAPER TOWELS to serve as the base to patch the hole. Hmm, I wonder why it didn't work??

Really??