how to remove wallpaper with a smile on your face

As you can see from these before pictures the wallpaper was really pretty in the bathroom. The first thing we did in the house, 4 days after we moved in was redo the bathroom. A dirty, gross bathroom makes me really uncomfortable. The medicine cabinet was covered in mold, the floors and walls were stained and dirt covered and the toilet seat was wooden. Enough said.

Gross.

My sister generously picked up a new toilet seat for us the day we moved in. I felt better instantly.

Next up, we had to tackle the wallpaper. We borrowed this champ of a steamer from my parents to assist in the process. It takes a while for the steamer to heat up, but allowing it the proper time made the removal that much easier. And that puppy got hot. The steam was so intense that the freckles on my face tripled. For real. We simply followed the instructions it came with and got to work. I was in awe at how easy the paper peeled off by using the steamer.

I was in charge of steaming the paper and Al followed me scraping and peeling it off (except for in this photo where he’s being awesome and doing both jobs) . We started this project at 11pm and realized we didn’t have a scraper. So we used a paint stick. How’s that for working with what ya have?

We had the entire bathroom de-wallpapered (is that a word?) in about 45 minutes. I thought it would take 2 days. My happiness, and lack of actually helping, is shown here:

This is how it looked sans wallpaper. Excuse that massive plunger smack in the middle of the picture.

I’d say it’s a whole lot better looking like that than it was with the wallpaper. It’s amazing how much bigger the room felt once the wallpaper was removed too. If you’re looking to remove wallpaper anytime soon I definitely recommend getting a steamer like the one we used. It simply made the whole project that much more tolerable and it was a huge time saver. Though, truthfully, I hope I never come in contact with wallpaper again. In my life. Ever. Who thought it was a good idea to glue paper to walls?