How To Remove Wallpaper Border

Those attractive and artistic materials called wallpapers used for enhancing the beauty of your walls, can sometimes become a headache, particularly when you want them removed. Whether you’ve purchased a new home or are planning to redo your walls, pulling off the old wallpapers is important. While most wallpaper borders available these days are self-adhesive, some people apply additional wallpaper adhesives to keep the borders in place for many years. Just as you made great efforts to get a unique designer wall, likewise removing the same also requires tremendous efforts and can prove to be a daunting task. Thus, if the wallpaper borders have been attached without any adhesives, they can be easily removed by applying water. In other cases, you can choose from different methods to get rid of the border without harming the wall.

 

 

Heat up the wallpaper border with hairdryer before you proceed with applying water or other moisture. Test a corner to see if the border is easily being pulled off or not. In case it does not come off straight away, then probably a strong adhesive has been applied and hence, you need to try out a different approach.

 

Fill up a small spray gun with warm water. Though you can use vinegar as well, the unpleasant odor that it will leave back can easily pull you off from entering the room for days, especially if you are retaining the wallpaper background. Spray the wallpaper and border generously, and scrape it gently using a plastic scrapper. Avoid metal scrappers, as they can damage the wall surface underneath. In case you damage the surface, you’ll have to spackle and re-paint the area.

 

After following the above methods, if you are still gazing at a firmly attached wallpaper border, you’ll have to apply more moisture. Prepare soapy warm water in a bucket and sponge it onto the border. And if it’s a vinyl waterproof border, you’ll have to squeeze out a little energy to penetrate the water. You can use perforation tools for a large border. As for small areas, you can easily get off with sewing pins. Wait for at least 10 minutes and start scraping off the border.

 

Although steam wallpaper strippers are cheap, you can get your job done by renting a wall stripper, for it’s no use buying them for one-time jobs. Start steaming from the bottom, graduating to the top. After the border has been steamed, the border will come off automatically with some gentle scrapping required.

 

Now that you have got rid of the wallpaper border, do not forget to clear up any mess so created on the wall. Any traces of adhesives should be cleaned; else the new wallpaper or paint that you apply will be spoiled by the adhesive residue. Leave the wall bare overnight, allowing it to dry, before you apply any new material on it.

 

By following the above stated techniques to remove wallpaper borders, you can even get rid of the most stubborn ones easily.