Removing Wallpaper with a Steam Mop

This marks the beginning of not only our bathroom renovation, but also the beginning of our house-renovation altogether. I’ve been planning this out for some time and I actually hoped to have started this much sooner; but as always, life doesn’t go to plan. Never-the-less, we’ve started now and I’m overjoyed by it! What was once a pink average non-fussed bathroom, is now a building site.. and I must say, I quite like it! That sounds a bit odd doesn’t it? What I mean is, I enjoy the prospect of watching the room change daily, even if it means becoming an utter mess, because I know that it’s all working towards that end goal – the vision I have of our newly renovated bathroom. No pain, no gain, as they say.

So yes, the wallpaper was obviously the first thing to go. This house is covered in wallpaper. Every. Single. God. Damn. Room. – Including the ceiling! What a nightmare. To top it off, it’s been painted over the top – which I only imagined would make the wallpaper even harder to remove. Such joy. If you haven’t removed wallpaper before, I’ll sum up the process for ya; it’s time consuming, wrist-aching, slow, boring work. Since we have oh so much of it to remove, we thought about buying a steam-stripper, which vary in price, ranging from around £20-£70. But then I had a bit of a light-bulb moment and thought, hey I wonder if our steam mop would work. And it did!

I’m the proud owner of this steam mop from Lakeland, (required when you have two dogs) and is able to detach into two separate parts and become a hand-held steam cleaner with multiple attachments – In the past I’ve used this to clean grout, windows, the oven, you name it. So I thought, surely one of those attachments will work as a substitute for a steam stripper? I tried out every attachment and found one that worked wonders. The one pictured below in particular.

I basically used it in the exact same way as a steam stripper; firmly holding it against the wallpaper for a few seconds until wet before removing the wallpaper with a scraper. It removed wallpaper like a dream. And now I’ve saved myself £20 or so, which is always good. Admittedly, the wallpaper paste residue will probably stick to the mop-head over time, but luckily you can buy replacements 🙂 – which are still cheaper than that £20.

I also want to mention this giant scraper I purchased from Screwfix for the bargain price of £5. Not only is it super long for those high-to-reach places, but it’s also super sharp and the blades are replaceable. This removes wallpaper probably 10x better than your average wall-scraper as it just requires much less work, I highly recommend.

One of the biggest anticipations of removing wallpaper is finding out what the plaster’s like underneath. Ours is actually in pretty good knick! There are quite a few hairline cracks which I think will show through any paint if not sorted out (we had this issue in our last house), but there was no air pockets to my findings and no flaking either, so hopefully this room won’t need re-plastering and we can just work with what we’ve got, hurray! Small celebration right there! ..At least for the walls – the ceiling’s yet to be discovered. Here’s our progress so far.. we still have a wall and a half left to complete..