My daughter has just bought a house. Every room is papered with wood chip and coated with 30 years of nicotine.

We have spent a day stripping one room using sponges to soak the paper and then scrapers to remove it.

Is there any more efficient way to do it?
Is there something to spray on that penetrates better than water?

We don't want to use steam strippers as every previous time we have used them they pop the plaster off too.

JCB.

You have my sympathy WCA its horrible stuff, my eyes still water at the feeling of a sliver of wood passing up my finger nail into the soft flesh as I scraped it for days and days at our last house 😥

Living room and half the hall way and stair case done yesterday.

Just the dining room, kitchen upstairs hall and 4 bedrooms to go.

Where do I get a JCB?

Use lot of warm water with a few drops of fairy liquid in, or wall paper stripper.

And these

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/16530/Decorating-Sundries/Decorators-Knives/Heavy-Duty-Scraper

There is no easy way or shortcut with woodchip.

Get someone else to do it!

You can also get a perforator too, will open the the paper to soak more water up. Running a stanley knife does the same

There is no easy way or shortcut with woodchip

This is very true.

You might get lucky and find the odd role simply peels of but this is rare. Be prepared (if your not already) to have the walls skimmed or filled in places. If its been on the walls a long time it can often bring plaster off with it in big chunks. That and you can sometimes gouge into the walls when scraping.

JCB, sorry cheeky comment 😳

The plaster behind is remarkably good which is why I don't want to use the steamer.

My neighbours doing nothing at the moment, and I've known her to bore the wallpaper off walls with her wonderful stories of how great she is at everything in the world ever.

We don't want to use steam strippers as every previous time we have used them they pop the plaster off too.

😕 Really ? Well if the plaster is that fragile, I would probably want to deal with it – steam strippers should be fine on sound walls.

Steam strippers melt the pva layer behind the skim, which is why it blows

In my last house I stripped woodchip off 3 rooms and the hall. I hired a big steamer and spiky roller thing to let the steam through. It was still the biggest pain in the arse ever and took days. Scraper took a few gouges out and even thought the plaster was good it needed a fair bit of filling. The best bit was that the b@sterds had woodchipped all the ceilings, never has my arm ached so much.

I second the perforator I think its called a tigers claw, makes the steam penetrate much better. And use fabric conditioner, it helps wet the steam into the paper. I've stripped a lifetimes worth of donkeys breakfast.

'I've stripped a lifetimes worth of donkeys breakfast'

you poor sod

When i moved in to my bungalow,I had woodchip paper in every room.Bloody stuff,Someone had kindly painted the living room with exterior paint.The paper was 5 layers deep as well,Took me 3 days to do the living room,and then another day to fill all the small marks and 50 holes above the window.4 coats of paint and it looked lovely.I had a fortnight off and did all the rooms,i was glad to go to work in the end.

nicolaisam – That is pretty much sounds like what we are facing.

I just started stripping woodchip in my new flat

I had a house a few years ago with the nightmare scenario described above – took forever to strip and the whole house needed replastering afterwards

With my flat I was seriously considering just living with it – but I started pealing some off (just to see). To my amazement its peeling off really easily, no steam or stripping solution required, just coming off in whole rolls of paper. Plus the plaster underneath is pretty good, just a bit of filling and sanding required i think.

feel like I've caught a break for a change

The plaster behind is remarkably good which is why I don't want to use the steamer.

FFS use a steamer! Yove seen our hall haven't you WCA? That took 3-4 days to strip and I wouldn't have entertained NOT using a steamer. Kitchen and dining room next…. 😐

get a plasterer in to give it a skim coat…

horrible horrible stuff. sadly the best technique I know is sponge, scraper and time. Still lost half the plaster as well, but thats cos our house was made by idiots.

Next time I'm simply going to smash the panels in and repanel with new plasterboard.

+ whatever for perforator & steamer = easy life
Well maybe not that easy a life, but a damned sight easier than what your doing.

Steam it, I've done about 50000000M squared in our place now, wouldn't contemplate it without. Score the paper to let the steam get under it proper.

Alternately you could try WallWik – sort of a solution to soak big sheets in that you then slap on the wall and leave – the paper mostly falls off then.
Downsides – it's a bit pricey, and very messy (though no worse than steaming) but it is reasonably effective. I stopped using it as it was just too expensive once I'd finished my test purchase.

Next time I'm simply going to smash the panels in and repanel with new plasterboard.

If its a modern house, I can almost imagine how this might not be a bad option…..

With my flat I was seriously considering just living with it – but I started pealing some off (just to see). To my amazement its peeling off really easily, no steam or stripping solution required, just coming off in whole rolls of paper. Plus the plaster underneath is pretty good, just a bit of filling and sanding required i think.

There were big areas like this in my place too, on what looked like concrete walls (always external walls). These sections were immensely satisfying and quicker done dry – wne back over with the steamer later to clear the few stubborn bits.

Hope i'm not too late with this one WCA -one of the best DIY tips I ever rec'd.

Before you get the water / steamer etc out go round with your scraper and scrape the wooden chips off – sounds like doing the job twice but, trust me – knocking the chips off leaves lots of holes in the paint / nicotine which lets the water / steam in = much quicker stripping…

HTH

Oh – BTW – streamer FTW !!!

Heavy duty stripper from Wickes to take off the wood chip lumps from one wall.
Shoot the wall with my super soaker.
Strip lumps from the second wall.
Super soaker it and the first wall again.
Strip the first wall which has now absorbed the water.
repeat around the room.

It actually works quite well.

It actually works quite well.

yup, sure a hell beats just scoring the paper and trying to soak it, got that badge once, thankfully, never again….

oh, yes, we can tell you're having fun with the super soaker but it's still a steamer for the ultimate win… 😉

I bought a house that had woodchip, painted over, woodchipped over again and then painted with several layers.

You have 2 options if you want smooth walls :
1) plaster over the top of it
2) use a steam stripper and then plaster the blown bits.

IME the cheaper steam strippers tend to blow the plaster less,
if you score the woodchip with a scraper first the steam gets under the woodchip quicker and you're less likely to blow the plaster.
Start from the top of the wall and progress downwards that way the hot water dribbles down loosening the woodchip on the lower sections before you get there – which makes it easier to strip and less likely to blow the plaster.

Our decorator leant us his hardcore wallpaper stripping tools when we had this challenge. A key tool was this bizarre UFOesque device with three pairs of spiked wheels, which you run over the wallpaper to pierce lots of holes through it so when you use the steamer the steam gets between the wallpaper and wall and softens the adhesive. Also useful were a selection of different proper paper strippers, which all use things like cut-throat razor blades to get under the paper and peel it off in longer strips.

Have you tried using a wood strip? Apparently its effectiveness is yet to be ascertained, thought any data you could supply might help answer the age old question

If a wood strip could strip wood chip, how much wood chip would a would strip strip?

Take the steamer, remove the pipe from the head and hang it over something high away from the walls and plugs. Fill the steamer switch it on and shut the door. If steamers melt the PVA don't get the walls hot. Fill the room with steam from the steamer and the go in with a scraper.

My time is worth too much to me to muck about with woodchip.
I either strip the walls back and re-board the walls or sheet over the existing walls. A sheet of plasterboard will be >£10 and it'll prob take up to an hour to strip 8×16 of woodchip. Won't take you too long to screw the boards up. Makes good maths to me.

Shut all doors and windows to trap moisture.

Use a perforator to pincure the paper.

Sponge it all down a few times allowing 10-15 mins a time for the water to soak in.

Get a 4" wallpaper scraper and don;t be frightened to use a wallpaper steamer.

To stop the top layer of plaster blowing, don't dwell on one spot for too long.

Expect the plasterwork beneath to be poor (why else would people have used woodchip everywhere?).

When you have stripped the walls and washed them down with sugar soap, repair the imperfections with Gyproc Eazifill jointing plaster. It's easy to use and doesn't go off as quickly as other plasters. It's very much like Polyfiller, but you mix much larger quantities.

Allow to dry and sand flat.

Apply a mist coat of slightly watered down emulsion then decorate as usual.