Why does wallcovering removal sometimes require PRAYER?
Once upon a time all wallpaper was fairly easy to remove. But that is because many years ago all wallPAPER was just that...paper. You could hang layer on top of layer of wallPAPER and really not cause yourself any major problems. Moisture in the paste could dry out the front or the back...after all no one had yet found a way to make PAPER waterproof. There wasn't a lot of worry about taking off wallPAPER we just added another layer! For those who wanted to take the old wallPAPER off they just wet the wall really good allowing the water to soak through all those layers. Life was so simple. Dull but simple.
WOW! Then came a big step forward. Vinyl wallcoverings were invented and came on the market. Wallpaper is no longer just paper....WallCOVERING is now waterproof! You can wipe it down and have it look brand new! Wallcovering is much more durable, looks brighter and lasts longer!
But we all know that nothing has only one side. Just like the computer taking over for manual typewriters (remember those?) it does make some things much better but it also gives us some additional difficulties we have to solve. So it is with vinyl wallcoverings.
To further complicate things vinyl is not just vinyl is not just vinyl is not just vinyl. It can either be a vinyl COATED wallcovering or it can be a vinyl FILM wallcovering.
Vinyl FILM wallcoverings are an actual sheet of vinyl laid on top of the paper. Vinyl COATED wallcoverings have the vinyl sprayed on top of the paper. This is makes a huge difference to you when you attempt to remove it.
Let's try and explain the difference. Pretend with me for a minute that your hair is the wallcovering. (I know this sounds kinda silly -- but just "stick" with me...) The Vinyl FILM wallcovering is like covering our heads with a hat. The vinyl COATED wallcovering is like covering our hair with hair spray. The hat is easily removed from our hair. The hair spray is attached -- you can't just pull it off.
If you have a vinyl FILM wallcovering you can actually just peel the vinyl off the wallcovering -- just like removing that hat. You know what you have left? PAPER. Plain paper. Weeeee! So what can we do to get paper off? Wet it up. Allowing the water it to soak through that PAPER. That in turns wets up the old paste. Once that old paste is wet it no longer holds anything to the wall.
BUT....If you have a vinyl COATED wallcovering (remember that is the stuff that is like having a hair spray) you can't possibly pull the vinyl protection off the paper. It doesn't make much sense to wet it up because it has that wonderful vinyl protection on it. How do we get behind that vinyl so we can wet up the paste and remove the covering from the wall?
This is where the neat little tool the PAPER TIGER from Zinsser comes in. The PAPER TIGER allows you to poke little holes in the wallcovering. Those little holes allow you to get through the vinyl sprayed on protection and wet up the old paste. Once that paste is wet...bingo...the wallCOVERING comes off.
So is that all there is to it? NOPE. We complicate things further by making vinyl wallcoverings strippable. That simply means that the PAPER that the wallcoverings were printed on (before any vinyl protection was added) have a big huge cotton content. What that should mean to you (the consumer) is that if you have a strippable wallcovering you don't have to worry about any of this vinyl stuff.
Because the paper itself is made stronger by putting cotton into it --- the paper will hold together when you yank on it to take it off the wall. (By the way....this is what makes our paper money last a long time. Can you imagine trying to depend on dollar bills to last that were made on the kind of paper that goes into your printer?)
Getting back to the subject.... many times this strippable wallcovering just means all you need to do to get the old wallcovering off is get under a corner and pull. This is actually easier to remove than when wallPAPER was just PAPER.
BUT.......this is not an ALWAYS thing. There are no LAWS that say how much cotton must be in the paper before it is called strippable. Obviously the more cotton....the more strippable. You could get wallcovering that is sort-of-kind-of strippable. You can also be really blessed and get a wallcovering that is wonderfully strippable. No fuss -- no muss.
You also need to know that if no primer was put on the wall before hanging the wall you are probably going to have some problems. One of the function of primers (wallcovering undercoats) is to protect the wallboard. If the wall wasn't correctly primed then you could be in trouble...you could end up with torn drywall. That is where the face of the drywall comes off when you remove the wallcovering.
We have found when teaching that if students understand the WHY of something....the actual doing of it becomes a whole lot easier. All of this long explanation was to help you know WHY sometimes wallcovering comes off without any trouble and why sometimes it feels like the world's longest job.
It always helps to know WHAT you are dealing with before you charge on ahead and do all sorts of unnecessary work.
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