Water Damaged Wallpaper, What is your next step?

Water damaged wallpaper is messy, unsightly, possibly moldy and can be a lot of work to correct.

We have just completed a home in which 6 rooms were damaged from last winters severe storms.  Of the six rooms four of them were wallpapered and the wallpaper had been damaged and in two cases, the wallboard in areas had to be replaced.

The opportunity to match the wallpaper that was still intact and in original shape as when it was installed was now impossible as we could not find any matches as the wallpaper was in excess of fifteen years old.

What to do now?:  (as we were working with an insurance company they gave us two options but wanted to make sure it was done correctly).

We performed the following steps in correcting the damaged wallpaper to rewallpaper:

1. Removed all the wallpaper from the room
2. Utilized hot water and wallpaper paste remover to remove paste residue from the walls
3. Repaired all walls. In some instances cutting out damaged sections of wall, checking for wet insulation and repairing the damage.
4. Apply wallpaper sizing to prep walls for wallpaper

(the picture to the right is surface mold behind the wallpaper)

To change from wallpaper to paint:

1. Removed all the wallpaper from the room
2. Utilized hot water and wallpaper paste remover to remove paste residue from the walls
3. Repaired all walls. In some instances cutting out damaged sections of wall, checking for wet insulation and repairing the damage.
4. Sanded and applied an oil based primer to seal all walls and “lock down” any remaining wallpaper paste.  (if paste is still present it will/can be activated by using a latex primer and will give you an uneven textured finish that you will not desire)
5. Resand all walls and vacuum down
6. Apply paint as desired.