The project
3 months ago we started the crazy journey of renovating a 1930’s semi-detached house in West Midlands. We found this outdated property in a beautiful neighbourhood in the suburbs of Birmingham just before Christmas and we knew instantly that this is going to be our new project. After a few months the property came to our ownership and the renovation plans started. I cannot stress enough how important planning, budgeting and sourcing is to make sure that your dream renovation doesn’t become a nightmare scenario.
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After
The construction and interior market is booming the past year and to find a building company to turn our vision into reality was our biggest challenge. If you are thinking that you want to renovate soon think again, the best trades people would be more likely booked 3 to 6 months ahead.
The wallpaper game
After booking the building company we had a couple of weeks before any builders or decorators started working in our property. The wallpaper game was on.
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After
Removing wallpaper can be a costly and time consuming job. The property had layers and layers of wallpaper. We knew wallpaper removal was something we could easily do ourselves and it would save us a lot of money. It took 3 weeks to remove all of it. We spent all our weekends and time off work to remove the old wallpaper. It was really fun when we started but just when we thought we were done with one room we realised that we had another layer to remove. One weeks job, fast turned to 3 and we understood why no decorators wanted to give us a fix price for removing the wallpaper “you just never know how long time it can take”. Our biggest concern at that point was the condition of the plaster under all these layers. Usually expectations are not that high with old properties. The previous owner has reassured us that the whole house was properly plastered 10 yrs ago but we of course wouldn’t take his word for it. A plaster hiccup could through our budget off up to 10K and that was something we needed to know before we started doing major works in the house. The condition of the plaster was descent and we needed to plaster a few areas of the walls. Not having to full plaster the house and pay someone to remove the wallpaper gave us a big add on our budget.
A lot of people prefer to paint on the top of their wallpaper and I will give you the most important reason to NEVER EVER DO SO! see below…
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After
As we started removing the wallpaper from the master bedroom we found mold all over the bay window. The mold was hiding itself under the wallpaper. The only way to find out what was causing it was to start removing the wall. A big surprise was waiting for us there. A bee and bird nest have created the problem. We removed everything, cleaned the area and plastered.
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We removed the carpets and part of the flooring ourselves and the builders were ready to start with our project.
It was time to Create a Home!
Tools we used to remove the wallpaper
Wagner Steamforce 2000W, Heavy duty Scrapers, Stanley orbital scorer, Ladder, Soap and Water.
“How to”useful video