How to remove paint over wallpaper glue?

Angies

Hi brains trust! 🤔
We have a wall which has been painted over residual wallpaper glue. It looks awful 😞

I am guessing that we would need to use paint stripper to remove the paint and then attempt to remove the glue or is paint stripper effective for both?

EricL

Hello @Angies

Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community. It's wonderful to have you join us, and thank you for sharing your question about removing wallpaper glue.

One way to flatten an area of your wall that has a lumpy spot is to either sand it down or apply plaster to even out the surface. You'll be able to tell if the spot is high or low by putting your head at the end of the wall and observing its surface. If it's high, I suggest sanding it down. If it's low, you'll need to add plaster to fill in the low spot.

Either way, sanding that spot will be part of the repair step. I suggest using either an Electric Sander or a UNi-PRO Cork Sanding Block to give you a uniform finish. Sanding it with just your hand over the sandpaper is not advised as it will produce waves in the plaster wall.

A paint stripper will not be needed as sandpaper will strip everything off the wall. I suggest bringing a chip off the wall paint no smaller than a 10c coin to the paint department so that they can mix you a batch in the same colour.

Here are a few handy step-by-step guides: