Kat, I have seen yours before both are nice. Raven, that is so cute. I have been lucky to find some neat icons. I think the pencils are neat and I have oil pants and a brush.

Sarah, You can buy "true" TSP from the Real Milk Paint Company and have it delivered to NY. I just did it. I use a Lady Bug steamer (normally used for house cleaning) to remove wallpaper. I'm not sure which kind of fabric steamer you have, but you might want to check out JOhn Leeke's website where he has a long discussion and clear instructions for paint removal using a fabric steamer. He's using one of those $250-$350 ones with a floor tank, and tall "IV-stand" looking poles. (BTW, for those who are interested in buying one of these clothes steamers, the Gaylord Library Supply company has them on sale until Oct/Nov.) He's adapted some tools to use with it and apparently is really keen on the method for paint stripping and putty-softening jobs and other old-house paint stripping. I was thinking of one of those UV-paint strippers, but decided to research more in light of the hearing about the steam method. The steam method seems great, especially when dealing with lead paint as steam is always below the lead vaporization temp, so no worry there. (I deliberately tried to remove some paint with my Lady Bug; it worked OK, on some paints, but would be improved with a more powerful machine; meanwhile I found Soy-GEl, which works even better on some floor paint that the steamer didn't affect, so I veered off that way.....) I think JOhn's website is www.historichomeworks.com, but I am away from my home computer so can't say for sure. Google JOhn Leeke and windows and you'll turn him up easily. Molly~

I would not paint over wallpaper if it can be avoided in any way. if its been painted over before and isn't peeling off and looks ok then I would go aheah if I wasn't planning to live in the house for 10 or 20 more years. I have been removing walpapers to paint plaster walls. I have tried a few ways 1 was vingar and hot water that didn't work too well. 2 was hot water and fabric softener. that worked better. 3 was a comercial paste stripper you mix with hot water and sponge on the wall like the others and I had perforated the paper before trying any of these things. The commercial brand stripper didn't work much better than fabric softener either. last and final method was to get a steamer. I looked at renting one but at 30 bucks a day that was too much for all I have to do in the future to keep re-renting. so I bought a wagner power steamer at lowes for $50.00 the steamer is designed to remove the paper and it did loosen it up enough for me to pull and scrape it off very easy with very little damage at all to the walls. I would say use steam it is the fastest savest way to get walpaper off. I recomend using a perforating tool first so that the steam can get in and work faster. my one room had a coated paper and it came off vinyl and some of the pader first then I steamed it some more and the remaing came right off. if you have plaster no mater what there will be very small cracks that neeed attention and with any wall type you will have nail holes to mud up.

My enire house, except for two bathrooms is/was wallpapered. Each room had a different type of paper - some textured, some very thin and then there was the kitchen. I don't think the walls were primed at all. It was so bad that it took me six months to finally finish. Then I just paid someone to skimcoat and paint. I have a 4-day weekend coming up so I may tackle my bedroom. Here's what worked for me - I used kevlar gloves so none of anything I used, including boiling water, would bother my skin. An interior decorator told me to use someth household cleaner (can't remember which one), and hot woter - she does this for a living. When I got to HD, they were out of that product so I bought commercial grade 409. I kept a pot of water boiling to fill a small trash can, and then mixed in the 409. I used clean paint rollers to wash down the walls - they hold the water and put more heat on to the wallpaper. If I wasn't paying attention, I would drop water on the floor, but that's what the coated drop cloths were for. Overall, this worked MUCH BETTER than DIF, and was faster. The boiling water took off the paper and glue in one setting. The only rough spots were from using DIF and a scraper. This isn't the prettiest method, but it worked!! I'll be at the store buying a paint roller for the weekend. Of course I could pay a contractor the $1,000 he wants to do the same job I'm going to do. BTW, he was the cheapest. My question - I've heard by so many about using fabric softener. My question here - does it leave a greasy residue on the wall?