Wallpaper Removal & Wall Restoration
Steam-and-score removal, complete adhesive washing, and the skim coat that turns a stripped wall back into a paintable one.
- Free walkthrough
- Fixed written quote
- 1,000+ homes painted
Wallpaper removal is the job most people start themselves on a Saturday and call us about on a Sunday. The paper comes off easily enough; the problem is what is underneath. Decades-old adhesive stays on the wall as an invisible, water-soluble film, and paint applied over it will bubble, crawl or refuse to cure, sometimes weeks later.
Included
- Test patch first, to establish paper type and adhesive behaviour before pricing the full room
- Scoring and steam removal, or dry-strip where the paper is strippable
- Complete adhesive washing, repeated hot-water and enzyme passes until the wall squeaks
- Torn drywall facing sealed with an oil or shellac primer to stop it swelling under compound
- Skim coating over torn facing, gouges and residual texture
Not included
- Removal of wallpaper installed over asbestos-containing plaster in pre-1980 homes
- Repair of substrate that is failing structurally rather than cosmetically
- Removal of painted-over wallpaper without a test patch first, it may not be viable at any price
How we deliver it
- 01
Test patch
A square metre comes off first. That tells us whether this is a two-hour room or a two-day room, vinyl over primed drywall versus 1970s paper on unprimed board are entirely different jobs and we will not price one as the other.
- 02
Score and steam
Perforate the face so steam can reach the adhesive, then work in sections. Patience here is what keeps the drywall facing intact behind the paper.
- 03
Wash until it squeaks
The step DIY jobs skip. Repeated hot-water and enzyme passes to lift every trace of adhesive. A clean-looking wall can still be coated in glue, the test is whether it squeaks under a wet hand, not whether it looks clean.
- 04
Seal torn facing
Where the drywall paper has torn, an oil or shellac primer goes on before any compound. Skipping this lets water in the compound swell the torn facing into bubbles you then have to cut out.
Specification
- Removal method
- Score and steam, or dry-strip where the paper is strippable
- Adhesive removal
- Repeated hot-water and enzyme washing to a squeak-clean surface
- Torn facing
- Oil or shellac primer before any compound is applied
- Surface restoration
- Skim coat and sand to uniform flatness
- Sealer
- Full-surface primer sealer before finish coats
- Finish
- 2 coats in your chosen colour and sheen
- Typical duration
- 1–3 days per room depending on paper age and substrate
Questions
Full FAQCan you just paint over wallpaper?
You can, and it is occasionally the right call, tightly adhered, non-vinyl, smooth paper on a wall that is otherwise sound can be sealed with an oil-based primer and painted. But you are permanently committing to that decision, because removing painted-over wallpaper later is materially harder and more expensive than removing it now. In most cases we advise removing it properly while you have the room empty.
Why is my paint bubbling after I removed the wallpaper myself?
Residual adhesive. Wallpaper glue is water-soluble, so when you roll waterborne paint over a wall that still has an invisible glue film, the water reactivates the adhesive underneath and the coating lifts. It often looks fine on day one and fails within a fortnight. The fix is to wash the wall down completely, seal it with a primer, and recoat.
Why does wallpaper removal cost more than painting the same room?
Because it is three jobs stacked: removal, wall restoration, then painting. The removal itself is the cheap part. The expensive part is skim coating and sanding a wall whose drywall facing tore off with the paper, which is extremely common in homes where the paper was hung on unprimed board. That is why we test-patch before quoting rather than guessing.
Will my walls be damaged?
Some surface damage is normal and expected, particularly where paper was hung directly onto unprimed drywall. That is why skim coating is inside our scope rather than an add-on discovered halfway through. What we are selling is a paint-ready wall at the end, not simply the absence of wallpaper.
- Drywall & plasterCracks, holes, water damage and the seasonal settlement cracking that older Toronto homes produce every winter.→
- Interior paintingWhole-home and room-by-room interior repaints, quoted from a written finish specification rather than a verbal ballpark.→
- Ceilings & popcornStipple and popcorn texture removal, skim coating and ceiling repainting, with mandatory asbestos testing on anything pre-1990.→
Get a fixed quote for wallpaper removal.
Free walkthrough, a fixed written quote, and no obligation to go ahead.
- 1,000+ homes painted
- Free walkthroughs
- Fixed written quotes
- Serving Toronto and the GTA