It will need to be skim coated. Do the best you can with the wall that is messed up, and put a coat of oil based primer on it, and on existing wallpaper and have someone come and skim coat it.

How are you taking this off? You should be using a wallpaper steamer to minimize all of the repair work to the sheetrock later.

After removing wallpaper from 6 rooms (some in rooms with 12 foot ceilings) and trying every technique possible, the best way I found is with a sprayer of warm water & vinegar and lots of patience. Continually spray and soak, and you’ll eventually be able to pull it off in full sheets. This will avoid a lot of wall damage.

You can not skim coat on drywall paper or it will lift. You need to primer/seal the walls with a special primer that seals the paper and then skim coat.

We sprayed special wallpaper remover AND steamed the walls to remove the wallpaper. People who owned this house before put wallpaper on straight drywall. So now we’re going to have to treat the drywall before skim coating.

Trying to figure out the best thing to do over the wallpaper we have not removed 🤦🏻‍♀️ this is a disaster.

Did you use something to score the wallpaper before steaming? You have to do this to remove wallpaper.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Zinsser-Single-Head-PaperTiger-Scoring-Tool-2966/202745319#overlay

Amanda, to prevent further damage to your walls…I am going to suggest that you do something that I know will get a negative response here. Now that you know that the wallpaper on your walls was installed without proper preparation (priming), I suggest that you prime and PAINT your wallpaper. Yes. If you have visible seams, they can be carefully sealed and primed to prevent them (mostly) from showing. This can be done. I know. I had wallpaper improperly installed in my home. A metallic paper that no amount of scraping by professional painters could adequately remove without destroying my walls. They skimmed the seams. Primed everything to seal the paper. And painted the walls. They still look great. No seams show. So, I suggest that you find a stopping point. And stop trying to strip your wallpaper. Get someone to skim your walls where all the damage is now. And…prime EVERYTHING. Then paint. Yes, over the old wallpaper.

Get a garden sprayer, fill with hot water & vinegar. Score the wallpaper. Then spray the wallpaper repeatedly over several hours, it will eventually come off but it takes LOTS of patience. I’ve been in your situation and it’s not fun. Sorry you’re dealing with this.

Hang 1/4" drywall ontop if you have it available in your area. I find skim coating in my area was too expensive and putting drywall overtop and finishing it myself was a great cost savings. AND I have to agree with ptreckel to paint over the rest of it.

I trust that the OP has tried all the “methods” suggested, from “tigers” to spraying with water, etc. When drywall is NOT properly primed for wallpaper…the top layer of the drywall can peel off. Steamer can exacerbate the problem. Trust me, I know.

I had the same problem many years ago and decided to paint over the paper. It was so much less work. Just wanted to say that you should probably get that old (wet!) paper off the carpet ASAP or you might not be able to get it off easily later. :p

I just finished such a nightmare. I rented a steamer and a wallpaper tool that is basically a 12” long handle with a long razor blade at the end. It worked like a charm. Then lots of cleaning of residue of the wall with paper towels.

Thanks for all the suggestions!! I wish I would have realized it was glued directly to the drywall before finishing the whole wall 🤦🏻‍♀️ live and learn for sure! Definitely going to seal the problem wall, skim coat, then texture and prime/paint. Then just skim coat over seams of existing wallpapers then oil prime over it.

Question though! After applying the texture do I need to reapply the oil based primer or can I just use oil based paint/primer?

There sure are a lot of steps and lessons learned here. In our bathroom it just pulled right off, it was prepped correctly. This room was an add on room so someone differently did it.

If the wallpaper is vinyl paper, you can't just paint or prime over it. YOu need to use special primer.

The guy at sherwin Williams told us to use oil based primer.

I'm sure there are plenty of videos showing how to repair damaged drywall, but Ben has a couple, so search his channel and don't just watch the one shown below.

Gardz is a primer made for sealing torn drywall. I've used it and it does work.

https://www.youtube.com/@vancouvercarpenter821

There is a thing called wall paper lining. It is paintable. And it is designed for just such situations as yours. https://www.homedepot.ca/product/wall-doctor-lining-paper-paintable-white-wallpaper/1000763009