Painting services, wall prep
Wallpaper removal in Tyler, TX
The paper comes off, the glue comes off, the wall gets repaired and primed. Then it is ready for paint or for new paper.
Chapter 01
Score the paper, then get under it
Wallpaper comes off a wall in one of two ways: clean, or with the wall attached. The difference is mostly patience. Our painters score the paper first with a scoring tool so stripper and steam can get behind the surface instead of sitting on top of it, then lift the sheets in strips with wide scrapers.
Stubborn adhesive gets a steamer. Chemical strippers go on where steam is not enough. Before any of that starts, floors and fixtures are covered with plastic sheeting and drop cloths, because wet paper and loosened glue travel farther than anyone expects.
Quality Coats painter in a gold hoodie working on window trim inside a home
The glue is the real job
Taking the paper down is the easy half. Whatever adhesive stays behind will not take primer evenly, and it shows through the finished paint as a patchy sheen or a bubbling skin a few weeks later. So the walls get washed with a TSP cleaner and wiped until nothing slick is left.
Then we look at what the paper did to the wall. Torn drywall face, gouges and old nail holes are filled with joint compound and sanded smooth with a sanding block. When the damage goes deeper than a skim coat, it becomes a drywall repair job, and that page explains how those repairs are made.
A dust-free vacuum finishes the job. Sanding dust is the most common reason a fresh coat of primer looks gritty.
Chapter 03
Primed before it is called done
A bare, patched wall drinks paint unevenly, so every removal ends with caulking where trim meets the wall, a coat of primer, and a last look in raking light to catch what the eye misses head-on. Only then is the room ready for new wallpaper or interior paint.
If the paper was the thing you disliked and you are not sure what should replace it, we can sort that out too. Color consultation covers lighting, sheen and the short list of colors worth trying on the wall.
Quality Coats Painting carries liability insurance and workers' compensation, quotes in writing, and backs its labor with a written 3-year limited labor warranty. The price we quote is the price you pay.
Before the primer goes on
The wall has to pass five checks
Tape marks the edge of what we are protecting. Stripping paper is the reverse: the edge of the wall is what we are exposing, so it gets the same care. A wall that fails any line below is not ready for a coat of anything.
Once it passes, the wall is a blank page. Browse our preparation process to see how the same standard runs through every room we paint.
Wall condition sheet
- Paper and backing gone
- Adhesive washed off
- Gouges filled and sanded
- Dust vacuumed clean
- Primer on, trim caulked
Next stops after the paper