Now that the brown toilet is gone (hallelujah!), I can remove the carpet, and as much as I hate to say it, its time for the wallpaper. I am a master procrastinator, and I recently realized to what extent. Instead of removing the wallpaper I found myself folding laundry, reorganizing the storage room, taking my 3-year-old to Home Depot, and so on. I needed to woman up and take it on. So, naturally, first I removed the carpet. The steps are as follows…
How to remove carpet
Time needed: 1 hour and 30 minutes.
- Get a good grip on the corner and pull
- Cut the carpet into pieces using a knife
Cutting the carpet makes it so much easier to carry and dispose of.
- Remove the carpet pad
The carpet pad is stapled to the floor. I just ripped it up. Sorry about the blurry picture.
- Remove the staples
I used a flat head screw drove and pried each one out individually, which takes a boatload of time.
- Remove the pokey pieces of wood
The carpet is held into place with wooden strips that have little pokey nails sticking out. I used a hammer and prybar to get under them and pry them out.
You can see them more clearly with these pictures.
Here is the carpet around the toilet.
Here are those damn pokey things.
About 45 minutes and 20 bandaids later, the wood strips were gone.
Wallpaper Removal
It’s time to stop procrastinating and get to the wallpaper. I have removed wallpaper before and swore I would never do it again, but there is no way around it. I must proceed.
To demonstrate the tedium that is removing wallpaper I created a little video, but keep reading and I will give you the step-by-step below.
All wallpaper is not created equal, thank God! When I previously removed wallpaper, it was not as easy to rip off, as seen in the video. In this room, however, it came off really easily.
For the glue removal, I used WP Chomp World’s Best Wallpaper Stripper: and Sticky Paste Remover, Citrus Scent 22oz Super Concentrate. You just mix the solution as per the directions and you are ready to go.
Using your solution spray the area. Then wait a minute or two. You will see the glue change from the disgusting yellow to en even more disgusting taupe.
Then scrape the glue using a razor or paint scraping tool. It turns into a sticky mess and I had to clean the scraper about a million times.
All that is left to do is scrub with a sponge.
Just look at those walls! On to the next adventure!