I sympathize. I have removed more wallpaper than I like to remember. Its a tedious, miserable job. When selling my mothers house for her, she had many rooms with old, peeling wallpaper on walls that had not been primed, it was very difficult to remove. Some rooms we just put 1/4" sheetrock over it, yes, its an extra expense but saves a lot of time and aggravation and then you have a new, clean wall. We did have some adjustments in the wall and doorway trim, but even so, much less hassle than tearing all that paper off. I would not say I wouldn't buy a house that had painted over wallpaper, but I might question what other shortcuts the owners did, instead of doing things the right way. Sorry, no easy choices here - either strip it or sheetrock it. I hate wallpaper and will never use it again!

Hi Katie, my apologies for the delay in responding to your comment. I've been traveling over the holidays and rare access to a computer. I did end up caulking the gap between the baseboard and the wall. For cleaning gunk out of cracks, I'm starting to like using the bamboo skewers used for grilling that you can get at the supermarket. I had a batch of them in my cupboard and gave one a try and it worked so well, that I'm using them first in situations where I need something pointy. The bamboo is soft enough that it doesn't scratch anything, and I can dampen it and it'll pick up extraneous paper that's stuck in the crack. For some pieces of gunk in the crack, I also used a pair of needle-nose pliers, to extract the pieces. And, while I don't know if it's a bad thing to do, sometimes a piece of gunk would just fall more into the gap between the baseboard and wall, and I left it there. :-) I figured it would just get sealed under the line of caulk afterwards. Wear eye protection! Even if you don't think you need it, wear safety goggles, or at least your eyeglasses if you wear glasses. One day, I was caulking the baseboards in one of our bedrooms for the insulating value, and as I dragged my finger along, a chip of paint flew up off the baseboard toward my face. Since then, I always wear my goggles. About tips for caulking: - Do a search on YouTube for caulking. It really helped me to see videos of people actually doing it. - Get a good caulking gun. I got one from Lowes or Home Depot (I forget which one--I've been in and out of each so much these past weeks!) that was in the $10 range. I love its trigger mechanism. - Hold the gun at a 45 degree angle to both the wall and to the baseboard gap. I mean, this is in three dimensions: as you put the tube tip to the baseboard gap, make sure that it is a 45 degree angle between it and the vertical wall and a 45 degree angle between it and the horizontal-running gap line. (Hope that makes sense--it's hard to explain in words vs a picture. That's why the YouTube videos are so helpful.) - Do not make the hole in the tube too large when you cut it. The hole should not be larger than the gap you're trying to fill. And there was a post on one of these forums about tapering the hole that I thought was useful. While I can't find the posting this moment, I'll add the link when I locate it. Hope this helps! Lee

If there is old paper to remove, it absolutely must come off first! Walls sould be cleaned of paste, any damage spackled, and possibly new pre-wallpapering sealer applied. Painting of the ceilings would be next, followed by painting of the woodwork. Wallpapering would be last. You don't want to possibly damage brand new wallpaper by splashing paint on it! Also, cutting in paint to new wallpaper would be much more time consuming than doing the painting first and being able to simply paint up onto the wall a bit.

You have choices. You can cry about what has been done and how your money was wasted and live with what they did. You can stand up and demand that they reimburse you for the labor and materials that were ruined by their unacceptable application method. Or you can compromise. In most cases, compromise is the easiest answer. You get a 50% refund of both labor and materials or 100% refund of labor and you eat the materials cost. If they refuse to compromise at any reasonable level, you let them know that you will be going to small claims court and you will do everything in your power to destroy their business. You will post on Yelp and Nextdoor and Facebook and Twitter. You will make official complaints against their license (if either are licensed as GCs or Interior decorators) and complain to the BBB. Let them know that you take this very seriously and you will continue to barrage social media for the next 5 years. It will be your new hobby and will help you relieve the frustration of having such a disappointing result. With the money you get back you can choose how to move forward. My solution is a pretty inexpensive fix for decapitated birds. You are only painting the wallpaper border around the part you are keeping. You could do the border and border trim in Alabaster if that is what you want. I happen to like it with a darker border that matches the background of the wall paper.