This weekend we’re redecorating a room that has a paper border. I’ve got a steamer which I could use, good idea or is it overkill?
Any tips on easy border removal?

Depends on if it was self paste then use steamer or self adhesive, in which case no.

I find steamers blow the plaster off the wall,try peeling the border off first,the paper might peel off leaving a backing paper that will require wetting with warm water and a brush and then scrape off.

Having recently stripped a load of paper…

The only thing I’d suggest is getting the widest filling knife (usually 3″) rather than a stripping knife/scraper. This will get behind any paper much better than a blunter stripping blade. Steaming is probably overkill. Border’s are normally vinyl coated anyway aren’t they? Which (I think) makes them a bit impervious to steam.

I removed one last week just using a spray bottle full of diluted fabric softener and a wallpaper scraper. The top layer peeled off quite easily and the spray took care of the rest.

Nice one, cheers guys

*heads off to find filling knife

I had to remove a self adhesive one and tried all sorts of ‘tricks’, but the one that worked for me was heat. The wifes hairdryer made the glue soften enough that you could peel large chunks off with the glue. A hot air gun was too hot and left the glue behind and not enough heat meant that only small bits came off and circa 50% of the glue was left on the wall. It took some time to get the right balance

Wallpaper?

Little update: Turns out the paper was pasted on (with some nuclear fusion glue) but had a slightly vinyl finish.
I left MrsSb to do the first 2 hours during which time she managed about 6 feet of border then retired to the sofa muttering rude words.
I then took a sharp knife and slashed the border diagonally about every 2″ then sprayed with warm water with some fabric softener in it. This helped but the best solution was for the last wall – spray with water, leave for 15 mins, tear off top layer of paper, spray again and then go for a walk on the beach.
When we got back the base layer just came straight off.

Prob took 4.5 hours to do the lot – I hate borders 👿

Oh yeah… filling knife was too flexible, stripping knife was better.

One of these

and one of those water sprayer bottle things has worked really well for us in the past

Oh yeah… filling knife was too flexible, stripping knife was better.

🙁

Sorry for bum advice dude…worked for me on my wall a couple of weeks ago, maybe because mine was a rough Victorian wall meaning stripping blade didn’t flex on the bumpy bits. Sounded like an arse of a job for a bit of flipping border though. 😡

Cheesy that looks pretty wicked!

DD the filling knife has very sharp corners though and was great for slashing the paper – so £1.95 not wasted 🙂
(plus they make good flippers for the BBQ)

Sounded like an arse of a job for a bit of flipping border though.

It was rather but it was the only room in the house with a border so it had to go. The [roller] painting was a piece of cake by comparison!

Cheesy that looks pretty wicked!

I used that very thing! It was, hmmm…okayyy. Not bad for what it cost I suppose. Not sure it saved me much more time than slashing with Stanley knife.

Tbh, it’s having a proper industrial grade steamer that really does the trick. My DIY one was a bit shoite!