I can tell you from experience that the easiest way, depending on how much you have to do, is to go to some place like Home Depot and buy a wall paper steamer for around $50-60. Comes right off. All you do is put water in it, while it's heating you just take a razor and lightly score the paper in random places. Then the steamer has a flat like head you just put on the wall and slowly run across it. Comes right off. If there was a lot of glue on the wall you just use your scraper that you're using to get the paper off, it scrapes right off the wall.
Wall paper removal can be sooo time consuming and i'm telling you spending the money saves you time and trouble!!!

I use warm water in a garden pump sprayer (sometimes with DIF) & soak the wallpaper every few minutes to keep it wet. Then it normally comes off in huge sheets. I use my 5-1 tool & a 6" drywall knife also.

2 weeks ago I was on a cabinet install & the homeowner asked me how long it would take to remove the other half of his foyer wallpaper. He spent over 1 day on the other part along with his son & one of those $60 steamers. I just did it for him in 75 minutes.

I have not had good success with dif. I use one of those circle scorers and after I score it, I wet the paper with a solution of liquid fabric softener and water, a fairly strong solution, about 1/4 cup in 1/2 gallon. I just put it on with a very wet sponge, wait a couple of minutes, then wet it again and wait, total time about 5-10 mintues. It is important to give it time to work and not get in a big hurry. I have gotten whole sheets off this way. I also use one of those spatula type tools that they make for doing drywall seams. Often I can get right behind the paper and pop it off with this tool It is a little sharper than a wide putty knife.

If the paper was applied w/o priming the wall or previous coats of paint, you are in for an awful job. I have been chipping away at one layer of wallpaper for days in our powder room. My DH is now doing a skim-coat to smooth out all the places where I tore off the top layers of sheetrock/drywall. What a mess. Then he will have to sand and we are leaving some of the really hard paper rather than tear up more of the walls. He has an AQUA AIRE FILTER he bought at Lowes or HD. It attaches to his shop vac while he sands and the dust goes into a bucket of water that is the main part of the mechanism. This is for a diy
job. And I really hope your walls were prepped first! But many are not.

Thank you for the responses. How can I tell if the walls were prepped?

I went through 3 weeks of wallpaper removal..they had wallpapered right on top of un primed drywall...it was not pretty. One wall paper peeled off in large strips but left the backing pretty much on the wall...I then rented the steamer, it just bubbled up my drywall and made a huge mess, not to mention the burns I got from drips...I bought the DIF and tiger tool...marginally effective...the best approach that worked on my non-primed walls was to use half HOT water and half fabric softener...spray it on, leave for 5 minutes...let it soak into the backing well..you can see when you spray it if it soaks in or the glue is to thick to soak in...if it has a lot of glue on the backing then you'll have to do this 2-3 times. In those instances it helped a little to score those sections with the paper tiger....on tough spots I'd respray the solution and start working on it after two minutes....a special tool I bought (about $8) looks just like the paper tiger but is just a scraper....it did wonders compared to all the other flat handled scrapers I had....I could take off large sections without tearing into my drywall with it...

Good luck!
Tara

I have had very good luck with white vinegar and very hot water, mixed 50/50 and applied with a sponge. Score the paper, wet it a few times over 5 or 10 minutes, and it comes right off.

Cheap, non-toxic and effective.

I had a small commode area (6' X 5') with paper over previously painted (builder's paint) with most of one wall tiled. It took three spray bottles of DIF and 1 week of 3-4 hours per day to get it off. It was coming off in tiny pieces. I started with the smallest room now I'm thinking that the rest of the house will have to live with 90's style paper for the rest of its life.

If I do get up the courage to attack the other rooms, I will certainly try the recommendations that you all have shared. Thanks.

I have been using my method for about 20 years & its been tried & tested with great results 99% of the time. If I run into a situation with wallpaper over bare drywall then I have 2 choices. First is to take a million years to get it off & then repairing making a huge price for the customer in their bathroom or something, or just oil prime & skim the seams or the entire wall depending. As far as those paper tiger thingies that score the paper I would never use one because it marks your drywall with holes everywhere & then you have to skim out the walls entirely.

My enire house, except for two bathrooms is/was wallpapered. Each room had a different type of paper - some textured, some very thin and then there was the kitchen. I don't think the walls were primed at all. It was so bad that it took me six months to finally finish. Then I just paid someone to skimcoat and paint. I have a 4-day weekend coming up so I may tackle my bedroom. Here's what worked for me -

I used kevlar gloves so none of anything I used, including boiling water, would bother my skin. An interior decorator told me to use someth household cleaner (can't remember which one), and hot woter - she does this for a living. When I got to HD, they were out of that product so I bought commercial grade 409. I kept a pot of water boiling to fill a small trash can, and then mixed in the 409. I used clean paint rollers to wash down the walls - they hold the water and put more heat on to the wallpaper. If I wasn't paying attention, I would drop water on the floor, but that's what the coated drop cloths were for. Overall, this worked MUCH BETTER than DIF, and was faster. The boiling water took off the paper and glue in one setting. The only rough spots were from using DIF and a scraper. This isn't the prettiest method, but it worked!! I'll be at the store buying a paint roller for the weekend. Of course I could pay a contractor the $1,000 he wants to do the same job I'm going to do. BTW, he was the cheapest.

My question - I've heard by so many about using fabric softener. My question here - does it leave a greasy residue on the wall?

Ok now I have heard it all! Sulfuric acid has always worked well for me. Much better than that sissy boiling water! Seriously folks in a work environment with ladders & tarps, boiling water is not a good thing. Someone could really get hurt when you least expect it.

We spent a few days removing wallpaper that was professionally hung on primed walls (personally saw the man prime the walls so I know it was done). We tried vinegar, fabric softner, Dif, scrapers, fingernails and finally bought the $50 steamer from Lowe's. We stared out scoring the paper and it came off in confetti. Stopped scoring and steamed over the seams. Wallpaper came off in large sheets. The steamer is worth every penny. I will NEVER allow wallpaper in my home again. Good luck and just hang (ha) in there, you can do it, Pep

I've stripped wallpaper from a dozen or more rooms and the steamer has worked the best in most of those rooms.

I used a sprayer and hot water in the first room I did and will never go back to that if I have the use of a steamer.

What no one has mentioned yet is that the steamer is very fast at saturating the paste film left on the wall after the paper is off. Once the old paste is saturated, it wipes off in one or two swipes with a wet sponge. It takes about 30 seconds to saturate it with the steamer. It can take five or ten minutes or longer to saturate it with sponges and spritzers.

I stripped and washed down the walls in a 15' square room in 8 hours, including breaks. The walls were ready for priming and painting when I was done. There was no film of paste left to worry about. The walls were clean, bare plaster.

Do you know if the steamer is effective on plastic coated paper?

Thanks

mustangs, you might try pulling off the outer layer of "plastic coated" paper. Our entry paper came off like that in large pieces and then I was able to get the backing part of the paper off by wetting it. All of the walls had been covered over with drywall mud so there was no unprepped drywall. Now the guest bath needs to be done also and it is vinyl coated so am hoping that layer will come off easily, then I will sand the seams and use some thing on the remaining layer and paper over that. People who apply wallpaper over drywall that has not been prepped well should be outlawed!

Dorothy, that and popcorn ceilings! Thank you.

My experience was trial and error. I have 20 year old bathroom wallpaper. I tried scoring it, then covering it with DIF. That didn't work as well as peeling the wallpaper off first (came off easily). I then scored the backing/glue, covered it with DIF, waited and then scraped it right off. I was lucky. The sheetrock stayed intact. Next will be priming and painting the walls.

Funny you should ask this. In our local paper, every Saturday is the home/garden section. Anyway one of the big questions was wallpaper removal. Several people wrote in some odd ones but maybe they'll work for you. One was sprayed on, watered down fabric softener and the other was cheapo hair conditioner sprayed onto the wall. Others said vinegar/water solution and plain old hot water. So there you go. Good luck and it's not as bad as you think. The worst part is thinking about it. You'll be glad when you're done.