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
A clear painting scope
- 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
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.
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.
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