Oh, that's bad! It was probably so trendy at the time -- I am thinking of the Brady house's orange formica counters! Am I wrong in guessing early 70's?

I wish I had a scanned copy of the brown jungle-fern wallpaper I scraped (and scraped and scraped) off of bathroom walls in my first condo...

Wow!! I haven't even had any whiskey tonight, and that's really, really, bad!

Unfortunately, I don't have any pics of it, but the old rent house had one bathroom with Contact paper (yes...peel and stick) applied on top of gold foil paper with a pattern of peacock feathers. THAT was fun to remove. I ripped it all out, scrubbed the walls, patched, retextured, and painted. The landlord was surprised (and pleased) that I had taken it down. Like I could live with that?

Bathroom #2 also actually had vinyl shelf paper on the walls. Thankfully, it was barely attached, so one good tug on a corner and it was all down in 20 minutes.

Sometime this year, I'm getting to redo our entryway. The only place that has wallpaper, and it's some sort of linen/grasscloth type. It's got a coarse weave and it's slightly fuzzy. Like a fine burlap. Anyway, it's coming down, and knowing the PO's like I do, there's no telling what's under it. I'm scared to find out.

In our last house we also found some ugly under layers. The worst were the radiators in the living room that we joked had Dolphins colors on it. There were the teal and orange layers but also a wild olive green. It was easy to see because they painted over the drips and if you cut one down, it was like rings on an oak tree.
That room must have been wild in its day.

Our bathroom in this house was a mustard yellow fake onyx laminate disaster. When our reno is done, I'll post befores and afters. When we bought it, the whole house had been "whitewashed" with white paint sloppily spread on all the walls to hide any previous sins of decorating. The bathroom was the only place that had strong decor. This was our first inkling of the wallpaper. Our other bad sheetrock walls did not have the seams all over, so I am guessing this is the only area they went with paper and I guess they went whole hog. It is a narrow hallway by the bedrooms and it must have been seriously claustrophobic with those colors and patterns. The movie "High Anxiety" pops to mind with all the scenes of Mel Brooks in a spinning vortex, lol.

Dianalo, that was so bad, I had to get out the whiskey. It's still bad. Oy! I'm sure that whatever you do, it's going to look fabulous!

We came to conclusion that it had to be 60s or 70s because they must have been smoking something or dropping something to think this was a good idea.

I am exhausted as I spent a good part of the day removing this from the walls. We have about 70% of it off. Funny, but the uglier the paper, the stronger the glue....

That's some CRAZY wallpaper. I can sort of understand wood grain---sort of--- but not alternating stripes of woodgrain in different dominant colors!

Oh - that's bad! Was that really ever in style?

Luckily, no wallpaper here, although the drywall was so wavy that we ended up replacing all of it. It ended up being a blessing in disguise because when we opened up all the walls and ceilings we realized there was no insulation and several hidden electrical nightmares. Surprisingly, the house didn't burn down before we realized how bad it was!

My first house ever had wallpaper everywhere. Smoke-stained, shiny wallpaper. Unfortunately, replacing drywall wasn't in the budget so I spent many fun hours stripping wallpaper.

I don't have a picture of it, because the moment we got the keys to this house, I tore it out. The wallpaper in the master bathroom was the most hideous I've ever seen. It was that old fashioned newsprint type, but in BOLD 150 pt font was 'Wanted for MURDER' headlines and some headlines that read "Slaves for Auction". I am not kidding. There were more than one reference to slaves on that horrendous paper.

To top it off, it was also nicotine stained. Gad, it was awful.

Oh boy that is the pits. Removing wall paper is the worst. We only had a couple of borders to remove and I hated every minute of it, I really feel for you!

What are you using to remove it? You mentioned the strong glue so I'm going to ask if you've tried a solution of fabric softener and water to remove it? We used a 1/2 and 1/2 solution, sprayed the paper down with a bottle, let it absorb for a minute and that stuff just came right off, glue too. It's a tip I got from this forum and it worked like a charm! (smelled good too!)

Fabulously preserved under an equally hideous 1970s brick hearth for a wood stove..

You just don't have the vision to appreciate it. I think they were going for rustic cabin or ski lodge or maybe hermit's hut in the woods. I bet the house had great shag carpeting too.

the uglier the paper, the stronger the glue....
hee, hee, hee, that is so true

I've seen that fabric softener trick mentioned before. Doesn't it leave a residue that would interfere with painting or texturing? How do you get it all off?

Dianlo, my friends had that woodgrain equivalent in sheet vinyl flooring!

Thank goodness that when my parents used wallpaper, they had good taste. The wallpaper that was in their bathroom still actually looked pretty nice when Mom passed away.

franksmom, thanks for bringing that up, I should have added that we washed the walls afterward with TSP which removed all the residue and prepped the surface for priming.

I have to get fabric softener when I go out today. I used that in our last house and it did help. I am so glad the other side of the hall is all new sheetrock. This is a mid century ranch in a suburb, so rustic would have been so out of character.
I actually find it to be very amusing. There really were no signs of any character in the house before we found this as the master bath was fugly, yet original. Someone had to add this on purpose, and that makes me laugh. If I am going to tear down paper, at least it had better amuse me a little....
Now, that slave wallpaper would offend me no end. Ugly is better than hateful.

When we bought our house in 1999 - every room was wallpapered. No room was EVER painted - and the house was built in 1825.

Bedrooms

bathrooms - this was a 2 family so 2 baths -

tenant's kitchen

our future kitchen - white AND red counters

I have lots more pics but not on photobucket. We were fortunate that we had only 1 layer of wall paper except in the kitchen (a few layers). We converted our house back into a single family and I found lots of wallpaper behind walls and chases from the 1800's and probably some original to 1825. I will frame those pieces.

As awful as it is to remove it the one credit to wall paper is that once you do, it's gone and no traces remain. The previous owners of our house decided to do some faux painting in the kids rooms and a plaster application in the powder room. The faux paint left permanent marks on the wall that had to be repaired and the plaster which was globbed on with what looked like plastic bags (and then painted p**p brown) had to be sanded and it took 2 weeks to do. I wanted to just hang new drywall but that's another story. LOL

bostonpam, side note but *please* show us after pics, please? : ) I'm really really curious to see what you did with that house.

flyleft - We're still not done. My contractor left last May but we're doing all the painting and finish work ourselves (built ins like banquette, pantry, some cabinets, etc.). We also put in a pool this past summer and I'm working with a period landscape designer for an 1850's yard/flowers/garden for modern living. I have a blog which hasn't been updated in awhile - doesn't have the finished pool (but all that is going on now is painting and eventually built ins).

A side note - my contractor was back last week to gut a room that was destroyed by water damamge - not sure if it was ice dams but it was raining in our old kitchen and thru the floor to the new kitchen. Our contractor couldn't find the leak and our rubber roof "looks great" but we will probably get a new roof. Sigh... it never ends.

Here is a link that might be useful: bostonpam's renovation

The worse wallpaper we ever had in a house was one in IL.
It was flowers in orange, red, brown,black and gold in a fairly good size bathroom. Just awful!
I knew before we moved in it had to go and told DH to be prepared because it was coming down the first chance I got to work on it.
Before I even had a chance to unpack the first box. Our then 3 yr old daughter was in using the potty. I sent DH in to check on her cause she'd been in there awhile.
She had started removing the wallpaper on her own.
DH asked her why she did it and she told him it was ugly and she wanted to "help mommy make the house pretty."
Apparently she found a seam by the tp holder and gave it a pull. When it came off she just continued pulling at pieces.
I told her She was welcome to help mommy any time she wanted but in the future she needed to check with me first before she did stuff like that.
Next day I was fed up with unpacking boxes and took the time out to finish the job she started. Even the plain white walls under the paper wit h pencil marks and bits of other paper looked better than that wall paper.

I don't remember what color the wallpaper was at my mom's house before we peeled it. I remember some funky little flowers or something from the 70's. The room was very large and pretty much obscured the design into little dot to dot looking stuff. It was glued down tight. We could only get it off 1/2-1" at a time. We tried every kind of remover. Finally we just used warm,soapy water and just kept peeling for what seemed like forever. One morning my mom came in to wake me up. I bolted upright and yelled "wallpaper!!!". My mom looked confused then started laughing. I must have been dreaming about it.

Pesky, that is just plain scary wall covering. You win on the hideous wallpaper story hands down.

Found this under the vinyl paper in my kitchen. . .it literally made me itch just to look at it!!

I can still see perfectly clearly in my mind the wallpaper in the stairwell to the third floor of a Victorian in a town I lived in and in the house's third floor hallway. The house at the time had had only three owners, with the last two the son and grandson of the man who had had the house built. The wallpaper was 100% genuine Victorian and some of the most gorgeous stuff I have ever seen. The people who bought the house let it do downhill abominably, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they took the wallpaper down or painted over it without bothering to save even a scrap of it. They probably had no idea what it was they had there.

Cherigw...love the disembodied horse's head in the midst of fruitbowls...what is up with that? Disturbing!

Just remember someone picked these patterns (and not at gunpoint) out of a thousand options and were REALLY excited and proud of their wallpaper when it was new!

Oh this is a fun thread... I have to say the goldfish one im the bathroom is pretty note-worthy as well.
I know wallpaper has fallen out of favor lately (though I hear it's makaing a comeback as well) and I have slowly removed some in my house, but I have to say when it's wallpaper I have picked out- I mostly continue to love it and think it adds so much to a room and is so maintenance free. We just painted our kitchen (which was previously wallpapered) and after only a few months, there are marks from our less than graceful ways already on the walls. The wallpaper just didn't show the marks like that.
anyway, not to worry... the goldfish is safe and will not be making an appearance anytime soon at my house.

I'm sitting here laughing out loud at the pictures -- mostly out of relief that it isn't me who has to undo it. I've removed wallpaper before, but thank heavens it wasn't painted over. How much harder does that make your job?

I agree with you, that wallpaper takes the cake. How's that for diplomacy? lol

Painting over it makes is harder in some ways and easier in others. I am just about halfway done spackling that wall now. I stopped by the doorways because we plan on changing our the doors and door frames (metal frames, ugh) soon and I don't want to duplicate the work.

Bostonpam, I'd have gotten rid of that paper except the bedroom one with the flowers. While I'd have never picked it, it seemed wonderfully vintage.

I've been helping a friend strip wallpaper in her house. No pictures...but one room has what we call the "house of ill-repute" paper. Deep red with black flocking. I told her she needs to leave it in the closet. For posterity's sake.