This week's scrapings...

Writing about wallpaper covering school books for my last blog post got me to thinking about the last time I went on the tear and ending up wishing I had got in a professional stripper.

Steady on there now folks - I’m talking about removing wallpaper here!

Thinking back to it you know I’m pretty certain that removing wallpaper must be one of the most horrible jobs of the whole DIY scene.

Thankfully it’s been a while since I’ve had to do it – and even though we don’t have much wallpaper in our house any more, I know I’m very unlikely to be the first to suggest it needs replaced.

You see I still recall fairly vividly the last time that happened and it was left to yours truly to get the old stuff off the walls – even if I wasn’t to be trusted to put the new stuff on afterwards.

And so it was, with trusty scraper in hand I set about to remove paper that I’d agreed was getting to look a bit tatty, but which all of a sudden had me wondering why I was doing this?

After about three or four minutes of scraping off pieces no longer than a centimetre and two broken nails (isn’t amazing how you think your nail can tear pieces a sharp metal scraper can’t) came the temptation to just leave it on and have the new stuff put on over the top of it.

Hey, I know it can be and has been done before.

However that’s not really a good thing to do if - say a few years down the road - you might still want things in the room like, well…furniture.

The problem you see is this - if new paper is continually applied over the old paper then with each new layer your room will get smaller.

And if enough layers are applied well eventually you’d just end up with a tiny space in the centre of a well insulated and probably sound-proof room.

That would probably be great if you happen to need somewhere to practice the bagpipes. But if you are attached to stuff like the sofa and the tv, well there’s nothing else for it but to get the old layer of paper off first.

Now I know there are steam thingys you can hire out to help you strip the paper off the walls, but by the time I realised I was going do have to do this job (this translates to - by the time I was told I had to do this job) all the places where you might hire such equipment were closed.

The best I could manage was a bottle of gooey liquid stuff that had to be mixed with 16 pints of warm water and then applied to the walls with a sponge.

After that apparently, it was just a matter of letting the stuff soak through for a few minutes, then take the scraper and hey presto the old paper should just peel right off.

That was the theory behind it anyway, but of course in practice it was different.

Instead all my memories of wallpaper removal kept coming back to haunt me as the paper tore off in wee strips hardly the size of a finger-nail.

To make matters worse, even though I clearly recall the paper being applied as only one layer, it had decided that it would double the work for me and come off in two – the pattern on one layer that came off with not too much trouble – and then a plain thin piece that stuck to the wall like a leech.

But eventually even that scraped off too, leaving just the piece de resistance – the border!

Now I must admit that it never really crossed my mind before, but I now wonder why anybody in their right minds would want such a thing on their wall.

After all, look at all the wars and conflict borders have caused all over the world over the years, why would anybody want one in their living room?

Just like most of the other borders, once established these things don’t like to be torn away easily and I soon discovered that however ineffective the gooey stuff was against ordinary paste it was useless altogether against border adhesive.

But having set a time limit to get the whole job done, that meant there was nothing now for it but a lot of hard work and elbow grease to scrape away that border. In the end I made it….even if I just scraped inside the time!

I was assured as well that the replacement wallpaper would have a very long lifespan, but a few years on I’m beginning to wonder, just exactly how long is long?

In fact I’m wondering it so much that it might even be time to reflect on whether I really like that sofa after all…and wouldn’t now be a about a good time to start to take up the bagpipes…