Removal of Old Wall Paper? (how much, buying a house, buying)

[mitchell.glass]

We are buying a house in cedar park, it has some old wall paper, I am sure, 15 years old wall paper on it. It is old and has to go. anyone recommend a good company or person to remove old wall paper? I am not super handy, but from watching the youtube videos it looks pretty simple. Is it worth doing yourself? we have 5 rooms with bad wall paper. let me know. if anyone paid someone to do this, how much does it cost? roughly?

[CarnivalGal]

If it is a newer home, it probably can't be removed. We had some in the kitchen in our now 12-year-old house. I had removed wallpaper before rather easily, but it was always from an older home with plaster walls. Most builders here cut corners and put the wallpaper directly on the drywall, without even priming it. The result is that you can't remove it without removing a few layers of drywall with it. We had to hire someone to paint over it (seal the seams, prime it, texture it, etc.). Good luck!

[G Grasshopper]

It really depends, as noted, on how the wall paper was put up. I just removed a whole room of wallpaper. It was the heavy, vinyl kind that just pulled right off. It did, however, damage the drywall in some places. The thing about removing wall paper is that you always have to scrub all the old past off before you can paint. (I have had to deal with walls that were not scrubbed before painting, and the surface is horrible - glue and strings just painted over - yuk.) In this case, I had to scrub off the paste, then spackle and sand the areas where a piece of the drywall was pulled off, then prime the whole room, then go ahead and paint. (It took me 3 days to convert this large wallpapered room to a painted room. But it looks pretty nice, if I do say so.) I have, however, worked with some rooms where the wallpaper came off neatly, and I just had to scrub, then paint. I have also experienced some paper wallpaper (not vinylized) that had to be steamed off. I rented a steamer for this. I have had no luck at all with those spray bottles of stuff that say they help in removing wallpaper. I think water works just as well.
If you know you are going to remove the paper, one way or another, I would try to lift a corner to see how it comes off, and if it does any damage. How that experiment works will help you to know what approach to take, and whether you want to do it yourself.

[sinking]

If it doesn't seem like it will come off easily then just texture the walls with something modern like a knockdown right over the wall paper.