It’s a little busy in our master bathroom

A great space gone-haywire and how we are fixing it

Watch for the GIVEAWAY BELOW IN THIS POST!

We’ve been in our “new” home now for around a year and a half.  The bold wallpaper wrapping our master bathroom has quickly gone from a novelty we are tolerating to little houses and trees closing in on us.

I mean, in the grand scheme of wallpaper-clad rooms, it could be much, much, much worse.  However, this bathroom has never been our style and we are ready to do something about it… starting with the wallpaper.

Our master bathroom is a great space that has already been renovated, we are just looking to make it our own.  Here’s the plan:

1. Remove wallpaper
2. Paint Walls
3. Paint cabinets a light color
4. Change out the egg cabinet knobs (there are always love/hate!)
5. Refinish the mirror frames
6. Replace the vanity lights with something a little less samurai and a little more our style, but leave the chandelier because it’s fabulous

I’d been putting off this project for the sheer dread of removing wallpaper.  I’d done it once before with a spray, scrapers, and a scoring tool.  It was a ton of work, made a huge mess, and damaged the walls.

Then HomeRight, the people who supplied my fabulous airless paint sprayer, told me about their Steam Machine Multi-Purpose Steamer product that comes with a wallpaper removing attachment.  Keep reading because below you have a great chance to win one yourself!  It’s great for cleaning most of your home including grout & tile, bathtubs, even your grill so don’t miss the entry form below!

It’s such a simple idea, I’m completely surprised that this is the first that I’ve heard of it.  Steaming the wallpaper right off the wall.  Duh!  Could.  Not.  Wait.  To try it.

It’s super simple and everything you need to steam just about anything is in the box.  Assemble with wallpaper steamer attachment, add measured water, plug in, and go.

First, you’ll want to cut the caulking at the trim around the doors and baseboards so that the wallpaper doesn’t get stuck there.  If it does, it will tear like you can see under the knife (whoops!).  If you cut the caulking first, you’ll have a smooth line once the wallpaper is removed.

Place the steamer on the wall, pull the trigger, and a blast of steam fills the little box.  Since it’s translucent, you can see it.  HomeRight recommends scoring first, but I wanted to see how it would work without scoring since it would save a ton of work and our wallpaper was beginning to peel where shower steam gets to it most. HomeRight recommends steaming wallpaper for 20-30 seconds. I needed this time at first, but once the room was steamy, I didn’t need to hold it there that long.

The wallpaper will literally bubble-up.  After some experimenting, I found that if I moved the tool in the pattern below, that I could work quickly and remove the wallpaper in large sections.

Starting at a seam, I would slightly overlap the tool over the seam, then move the tool over (slightly overlapping the last section) to one direction, then again on another row.  I would do this for 2-3 rows at a time.  Any longer than this and the wallpaper would start to re-adhere to the wall and I would need to steam it again.  I was literally able to pull the wallpaper off section by section with little damage to the wall underneath.

After a section or two, the SteamMachine would run out of -heh- steam.  (See what I did there?)  The machine has to cool a bit before you can take the cap off to re-fill which was a bit of a drag, but not a huge deal because I used the time to put the wallpaper in a trash bag, clean & dry the floor, and (oh, yeah) peek in & say “hi” to my husband and kids in the other room.

I tried a few different techniques, but the 2-3 rows rolling each section up really put me into a groove so I went with it.  I also tried peeling the paper down, but found that the steam that rises when starting at the bottom is a great primer for the upper sections and I didn’t need to spend the recommended 20-30 seconds on those places.  Things got super-steamy, but I didn’t mind a bit watching this love-it-or-hate-it-totally-not-our-style wallpaper literally fall off the walls.

There were a few little tricky spots where the attachment didn’t quite fit so I had to let it hang over a corner or trim piece and where paper was extra-stubborn in corners.  For those areas, having a box cutter and my large, window-cleaning razor blade handy was great.  There were a few spots where the skim-coat under the wallpaper came off, especially where steam from the shower had caused damaged, but for the most-part the SteamMachine helped me quickly & easily take the wallpaper off without chemicals being exposed to my family, with very little mess, and hardly any damage to the walls underneath.

I’m going to save “after” photos for a big reveal, but you’ll see plenty of sneak peeks as we tackle other points on our “to-do” list for this master bathroom make-over.  Instead, enjoy a chance to win your own HomeRight SteamMachine for FREE below!

Doesn’t it look a million times better already?  I will need to touch-up the walls a bit before painting, but nothing like if I had scored, stripped, and scraped.

Want your own HomeRight SteamMachine?

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