Do you have wallpaper in your home? Like it? UPDATE post 25!

[missypie]

We're updating the powder room in our house. The last thing I needed to pick out was wallpaper. I spent about 2 hours at Home Depot; I paged though ALL the books (except juvenile). I checked out the books that had my top two favorites and just couldn't decide.

It finally dawned on my that every paper I liked had the look of textured, painted walls. So I decided...I'll just take off the paper, have the walls textured and painted and be done with it. Paint is much less expensive than paper!

How liberating! Just because the builder had bathroom walls papered doesn't mean that I have to live with it!!!

Do you have wall paper in your home? Do you like it?

 

[Sonya]

We do NOT have wallpaper by coice. I hate the stuff, and it is so hard to take off! (the older type, not the newer) I can't imagine putting it in a room that has a shower (you didn't say if yours does) b/c of all the steam. Have fun texturizing!

 

[disykat]

I would do almost anything to avoid wallpaper after renovating an older home that had multi-layers of it in almost every room.

 

[Rafiki Rafiki Rafiki]

What a PITA to remove!

We just finished pulling the wallpaper off our guest bathroom walls. It took 3 times as long as we originally planned. The sheetrock was heavily damaged, so we spackled, put on a primer, and then painted. We just put the finishing touches on it yesterday.

I've been visiting with a realtor about selling our house and asked her what I needed to do. She said one thing for sure--remove ALL wallpaper.

Unfortunately, I still have border in three rooms...I had to put it there because previous owners painted over the border that was there. I'm hoping to get away with it.

 

[mrsv98]

We have c.1970 shiny wallpaper in our living room and I DESPISE it! The problem we have discovered in removing other wallpaper in the house is that the walls were not prepped correctly when the wallpaper was hung. It has been a nightmare removing it from other rooms and I have no idea what to do about it in the living room. We have a 15' ceiling so we have to either rent scaffolding and attempt to do it ourselves or pay $2500-$3000 to have it done for us.

In the kitchen/family room I dealt with the problem by ragging the walls in two colors of yellowy-gold, the "Tuscon" look, so messed up walls actually add to the texture. I can't do that in the living room. *Sigh* So here we sit with ugly walls, ack!

 

[Christine]

I have no more wallpaper. I had it in my kitchen for 10 years and I actually really liked it because it cleaned up so well. But I was just tired of the "dated" look.

I did have a decorator come over to help me and she typically shuns wallpaper. But she said the one place she likes it is in a small powder room. The textured paint is nice (I've done this in my DD's room) but it is very hard to get it took look good in the corners and near the trim depending upon what you are doing. If I ever had to do a texture again, I would probably hire a professional.

 

[bananiem]

I loathe wallpaper. Both my Mom and MIL have it somewhere, although MIL has it in more rooms. I crossed many houses off our list when we were househunting because of so much wallpaper and the horror stories I've heard about taking it off.

 

[SC Minnie]

No!!!! I purposely do not have wallpaper in my house. I did look at wallpaper for our bonus room to put half way up the wall. What I liked looked like a paint texture. The lady at Home Depot showed me how to do it. I saved almost $200 and it looks great. People actually think it is wallpaper.

 

[puffkin]

I would do almost anything to avoid wallpaper after renovating an older home that had multi-layers of it in almost every room.

Sounds exactly like us. Semi-gloss paint in a bathroom works great. I bet if you texture the walls first it will really look nice.

 

[missypie]

We used to have it in our kitchen, too. Got rid of it when we remodeled about 5 years ago. I plan to have all of the bathrooms remodeled this year, so now that it has dawned on me that I don't HAVE to have wallpaper in the bathrooms, I won't have to page through all those heavy books anymore.

No, we won't be texturing ourselves. We basically don't do anything ourselves. (Hey, someone has to keep the economy running!)

 

[Beth76]

I hate wallpaper-so outdated. Paint is definitely the way to go. We have some wallpaper in our house, but it will all be gone eventually. It's really aggravating that someone actually painted over wallpaper before we moved in. We have the worst paper in our master bath. It's awful peach and teal splotches from the 80s. I tore most of it down, just ripped it off. The under layer is still there, but it's nicer to look at than the awful paper.

 

[laurietg]

We just bought a house with wallpaper in the 2 of the bathrooms, and the hallway. I hate it. I am dreading taking it down. Can we pay someone to do it?

 

[aprilgail2]

I ended up taking down paneling and wallpaper in every room over this house at some point and the wallpaper is such a pain to take down!! I ended up just having the rooms sheetrocked because once the wall paper came down the walls were to damaged to paint anyway.

 

[Disney Ella]

I stripped the wallpaper from my kitchen walls, intending to just paint the walls. After I got the paper off, I could see why the previous owners had wallpapered. There are gouges on the wall and damaged areas where tiles had been ripped off. Looks like I'm going to be putting wallpaper right back on those walls again since I'm not willing to pay to have the plaster removed and drywall put on.

 

[Am_I_There_Yet]

I have experience on both a personal level and a very recent professional experience as well.

On the personal front -

We recently remodeled two rooms - our kitchen and our secondary bathroom. Both rooms (as well as my master bath) had wallpaper from the early 90's.

I chose to remove it. Of course, it was easier said than done. The contractors put it directly on top of sheetrock and the only areas where it was easy to remove, was where they taped and floated the walls. Everywhere else, it took off the top layer of sheetrock.

So...

In both rooms, I removed it as far as I could, and I primed over the rest. I then did a texture similar to Venetian Plaster on top of it. It looks great!

On the professional front -

I just showed a house a few days ago, that had the wallpaper freshly removed in each room. They were also enclosing a gameroom. The house has been on the market just shy of one year. My client's girlfriend was commenting on how glad she was that the wallpaper was gone.

I suspected that the sellers were removing it due to negative feedback. When I called the listing agent to see if they would be texturing the walls, she confirmed what I suspected. Their wallpaper choices, as well as the fourth bedroom being opened into a gameroom, had hurt their resale value.

 

[MomofKatie]

Wow! It looks like we are the only ones who actually put any wallpaper up! We have a home that was a new build in 2000. the dining room lacked any sort of style, so we put up a chair rail- below it we painted a light biscuit color, and above a sage and shades of mauve/burgundy floral wallpaper. Looks very old-fashioned, in a good way. We also put a border up in the downstairs powder room, and tried to put up a chair rail height border in DDs room, but she ripped it down- twice! We now have a sponge painted border insted.

We have taken down wallpaper in a few houses- what a pain!!

 

[rockin_rep]

I hate wallpaper-so outdated. Paint is definitely the way to go.

ITA. I love the bright, fresh new wall colors! Slowly but surely, we're doing our entire home that way. Its only about 10 years old anyway, so never had paper to begin with.

I did have a decorator come over to help me and she typically shuns wallpaper. But she said the one place she likes it is in a small powder room.

I've heard that too, and while i'm so NOT a slave to trends, i have to agree!

 

[wvjovifan]

I used to have wallpaper in several of my rooms...but in the process of being sick of everything and redecorating (if I saw another speck of "country" I would barf) I had the awful job of scrapping the crap off of my walls...NEVER AGAIN !!!!! We tried the steamer, the sprays, the paint on stuff...it is all miserable to do.... I ended up just ripping off the paper and using a spray bottle of hot water and a paint scraper to remove the residue. Now I have all painted walls that I can change on a whim!!! I do have a few borders , but that is my limit for wallpaper!!!

 

[SeeDisney]

Well, I'm an oddball here but when we moved into our house 7 years ago it was all white walls. Husband wallpapered about 5 rooms and I still love it!!!

We've done the powder room, one boy's room, my girl's room, dining room and living room.

 

[Tigger&Belle]

I don't have much wallpaper. The upper part of my dining room walls (above the chair railings) are papered a maroon leather-look print paper. Hard to explain, but don't worry luvmydogs, it's not real leather.

I would also like to paper the kids hall bathroom. The bathroom consists of 2 rooms--first the part with the double sinks and a shower and then inside of that room a smaller room with the toilet and bathtub. I haven't figured out exactly what I want and have been procrastinating for years. I did find some paper that I like, but just need to make a decision and go for it.

Every where else there is paint.