Strike up the band! Fire the cannons! Attempt to twerk! Okay, maybe not that last one, but do whatever celebratory move feels right, because our once heavily wallpapered house is officially wallpaper-free.

We figured one final wallpaper removal post might be a little dry on its own, so we combined that update with other bathroom progress: specifically…

• how we filled, prepped, and primed the damaged walls
• how we primed and painted all of the cream trim and the old wood quarter-round
• what paint plan we’ve chosen for this newly de-wallpapered space (hint: we’re balancing bold floor tile with interest up high)

Let’s linger on the “wallpaper-free” milestone for a moment. Considering we’ve spent well over 45 hours removing wallpaper across five rooms in the last six months, we’re extremely relieved. It was one of Sherry’s pre-baby goals, so getting it done with a few months to spare means we can focus on more fun bathroom details before the baby arrives.

To jog your memory, the photo above shows the room with the walls only primed, and even that made a huge difference. The peeling actually began earlier than the final push. One morning Sherry called me in from the shower to show me that several panels had come off while she was showering—steam had loosened corners and edges, so those pieces came off with almost no effort.

Seeing how steam had worked on the shower area, we tried a clothes steamer for the rest of the room. From past experience, the steamer had been a bit faster than other methods in another room. We added one extra step we’d heard might help: spraying the wallpaper with a 50/50 mix of warm water and fabric softener before steaming. Because the room is small, I impulsively started the job early one morning, assuming I could finish quickly without even bothering with contacts or tucking in my hair.

That optimism faded after a long day. Despite using the steamer and fabric softener spray, most of the wallpaper came off in small strips and flakes rather than the large sheets we’d been able to remove in other spaces. By sunset the paper was gone, but the walls were in rougher shape than any other room we had stripped. It felt like the adhesive in this bathroom was extra tenacious—possibly due to years of steam and humidity—and the drywall underneath looked pretty rough.

Because the walls were more damaged, we did more intensive prep than usual. First we removed remaining adhesive with a light scrubbing of warm water and vinegar—our typical last prep step before painting. Then we sanded the walls with a sanding block to smooth out rough patches.

There were still dimples and low spots, so we applied spackle sparingly to fill those shallow depressions. I scraped the spackle firmly against the wall so coverage stayed thin but effective for leveling out the repaired areas.

The spackling wasn’t particularly fast, as you can tell from the photo of all the patched spots. A full-wall skim coat could have achieved a smoother overall finish, but that would have taken longer and created far more sanding dust. For our needs, a few targeted spackle patches followed by sanding did the trick.

Sanding the spackle is always messy, but once the dust was brushed and wiped away the walls looked much more even. The areas where wallpaper had torn off and taken a bit of drywall with it were now filled and smoothed.

Next we primed. The difference was dramatic: the yellowed, spotty walls immediately looked fresher and brighter once primed. Priming evened out the surface and made the entire room feel cleaner and more cohesive.

We also taped off the floor because Sherry decided to use the opportunity to paint all the cream trim white. The trim had been cream and the quarter-round was natural wood, so updating those elements took some time—especially around the window panes—but was well worth the effort. Sherry applied two coats of primer followed by two coats of semi-gloss white trim paint. The result is crisp white trim, no visible wooden quarter-round, and a room that feels refreshed now that the wallpaper is gone.

Here’s a quick recap of the wallpaper removal methods we tried across the house and what worked best:

• In the powder room, hot water applied with a spray bottle and hand-peeling (respraying and peeling the underlayer as needed) was slow but effective.
• In the foyer, using a clothes steamer felt slightly faster than the hot-water method, though it was more physically demanding when working up high.
• In the kitchen, warm water with soap sprayed on the wall, followed by a wet cloth to soak the underlayer and then peeling it off, performed on par with the hot-water approach.
• In the dining room, dry-peeling the top layer followed by damp sponge work to remove the underlayer was slow but worked.
• In this en-suite bathroom we returned to the steamer and added a pre-spray of warm water and fabric softener. Ironically, it was slower here and left the walls messier than other methods. We suspect this room used a particularly stubborn adhesive that resisted all techniques.

Overall, wallpaper removal depends a lot on how the paper was initially adhered and how well the walls are prepared. No single method was a miracle cure, but most approaches worked over the course of a day if you stuck with them. We hope documenting these five techniques helps anyone facing a stack of wallpapered walls and wondering where to start.

____________________________

With the prep work finished, we’re excited to try a paint treatment that will complement the existing blue floor tile while drawing the eye upward to make the room feel taller. Our plan is to introduce a soft, complementary blue up high by building a simple wood border around the top portion of the walls and carrying that color onto the ceiling. The idea is to balance the visual weight of the bold floor tile with interest above eye level, which should make the room feel less squat and more layered.

Next we’ll paint the primed walls and add the wood trim and accent color at the top of the room. With the shower curtain rehung and some art in place, we expect the transformed space will feel completely different from what we started with.

Are any of you tackling a bathroom update, or planning a wood-border-plus-paint project? Have you been removing wallpaper, spackling, priming, painting trim, or sanding? Feel free to share tips for anyone wrestling with those challenges.

Psst—Sherry is sharing more on her maternity clothing approach on her personal blog.