Removing Woodchip Wallpaper & Before/After

If you haven't heard of woodchip wallpaper, you are not missing out. It's often very tired-looking, dated and infamous in the DIY world for being extremely difficult to remove.
Whilst I'm sure it was once the latest trend in wall decoration, it certainly isn't now, and when we moved in we found the whole living room of our house coated with several layers of the stuff.

We set aside a whole weekend, determined to be rid of it and get some paint up on the walls! 

This kind of job is made much easier by using a steaming tool to cut through the initial layer of the woodchip. We used one from Black & Decker which worked a treat, but you can get them from any good DIY store.

Upon inspection of the wallpaper, we found it to have two distinct layers - The tough, outer layer of woodchip (the white layer in the photo) which had formed a plasticy texture where paint had merged with the woodchip. This was VERY difficult to remove and required quite a bit of elbow grease. Underneath it was a thinner, sticky paper texture, which came away much more easily using the steamer and a wallpaper scraper.

Top layer on the left, bottom on the right.

Daniel VS woodchip!
On the left is bare wall - This is what your wall will look like once the woodchip is completely removed.

We went around the room in a little production line. Dan removed the top layer and I followed behind him with the steamer, removing the second layer. 

Daniel having a well-deserved rest! 

In all, it took around twelve hours - Six hours on the Saturday and six on the Sunday.

The following weekend, once the walls were dry, we scrubbed the walls top to bottom with sugar soap to make sure they were paint-ready, and painted the entire room with bright white builder's paint from Homebase to provide a nice clean base to start from. 

Next, we painted the walls with Chic Shadow from Dulux, which is a lovely warm mid-grey. I really recommend this paint actually, it applied very smoothly and one tin seemed to go a really long way. Top tip when choosing paint colours - Search Pinterest for the specific colour/brand and often you will find images showing what that paint colour looks like in real homes, in different lights and against different furniture than your own. It's so hard to visualise paint colours in real life from looking at a tin of paint or a tester on your wall so this is a good tip!

Another idea for the colour-conscious - On the Dulux website they have a tool where you can choose your preferred paint colour and they will suggest other colours to complement it. They also have a little search engine which helps you work out which paint texture you need (matt, silk, eggshell etc). Fun and great for paint virgins!

Anyway, here's Chic Shadow going onto the walls. Excuse the patchiness, it was still drying.

First coat of Chic Shadow, by Dulux

And the final gorgeous result! 

We love the way it looks and it really has completely modernised the living room. For anyone wanting to remove woodchip from your home, I hope this post hasn't daunted you too much but shown you that while it's not easy, it IS do-able! *satisfied sigh*

The next step will be to add faux-coving around the ceiling edge and laminate flooring to finish it off, but that will be for another post another day!

That's all for now, I hope this post has helped you out or given you some inspiration.
- Em

A Decorative To-Do List

If you're doing up your house and are anything like us, you won't have an immediate budget to start buying curtains, wallpaper, flooring and the latest snazzy dishwasher all within the first weekend of moving in. Writing a master list of the things that need doing really helps to focus on the tasks at hand. So here goes - Some we have already ticked off but I have left in for information's sake.

The Kitchen

• Tiles to be painted - TICK! 
• Painting walls - TICK!
• New flooring (vinyl? currently weighing this up)
• New blind for the kitchen window

The orange tiles just weren't working for us, so as a temporary measure we've painted them with a grey tile paint. You can read my blog about it here! I'm so excited to post the before and after in a few days when the second coat is dry.


The Living Room

• Decide on paint colours
• Laminate flooring to be installed
• Woodchip wallpaper removed and replaced with paint
• Decide on pictures/frames arrangement
• Fit shelves

The living room is a top priority. It's the room where we eat our meals, entertain guests and one of the first rooms to be seen from the hallway when you come through the front door. There is a lot to do here, and I'm sure I'll be posting about the horror of removing the woodchip wallpaper before long. In fact - Does anyone have any tips on that? We'll have to do some Googling! Our laminate flooring has now arrived, but we'd like to strip the walls and paint before we put it down, to avoid paint disasters! You can read about our woodchip wallpaper removal here.


Entrance/Hallways

• White paint
• New stair handrail installed
• Gloss paint on stairs and cupboard doors
• Picture and print placement 

The hallway is currently a delightful shade of grubby beige, which could be lightened up a lot with a lick of white paint. Also, my Mum rightly pointed out that the handrail is less of a handrail and more of a... Piece of wood. So we'll rip that out and put something more suitable in its place.
We're also contemplating doing something with the stairs, along the lines of a dark gloss paint to contrast against the white walls - But the jury is still out on that one.


The Garden

• Paint fence (decide on colour)
• Rip out crazy huge, sun-blocking tree
• Lay down some new grass seeds - TICK!
• Build a little path from the patio to the garage. Dan would like to install little lights along to light the way
• Buy some garden furniture! 

Master Bedroom

• Decide on paint colour - Everything is cream at the moment so we have a blank canvas.
• Install blinds for privacy
• Find a new mirror for the dressing table (was broken in the move!)
• Possibly get some wardrobe organisers to create shelving in the fitted wardrobe. At the moment it's just hanging space.
• New carpet - Maybe?
• Super important - Get windows fixed as they currently do not open! 

Guest/2nd Bedroom

•  Decide on paint/wallpaper colours
• Install blinds for privacy
• Hang pictures

Porch

• De-spider everything
• Lick of white paint on brickwork to spruce it up
• Buy a nice plant for the entryway
• Pick up lamp table from parents house to put the above plant onto!
• New lock needed for inner door and potentially the outer doors too

So there you have it. There's quite a bit to be done, and so far the main work has happened in the kitchen, but we are getting there. Trying not to let myself get daunted as I know some people will have done much bigger renovations! It's mostly the decision-making we are rubbish at - Putting the ideas into practice is easier. 

I will blog again tomorrow with an update of the kitchen. It's now finished other than changing up the handles and putting in new flooring!

- Em