Ballpark Cost to strip Wallpaper and Paint?

mothermachine

mothermachine

mothermachine

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Hi folks,

The missus and I are about to buy our first house together (very excited... and nervous!) and we'll be looking to strip all the wallpaper off the walls (and ceilings!) in all the rooms and hallways etc (apart from bathroom). Standard 2 up 2 down terraced house.

Any ideas roughly how much it would cost to have a professional (or a team) strip the wallpaper and paint? I'm guessing there will be some holes revealed (or created) in the process which will need filling too. Any ideas as to timescales? As I say fairly standard 2 up 2 down plus hallways etc. No idea at all of how many layers of wallpaper or state of repair of the walls etc.

With 2 kids and tough work schedule DIY is probably unrealistic.

Thanks!
 
Gas boiler depends on pipe runs, if bathroom is above kitchen, & it's a straight forward drop down to new location, then say £250-£350.

You got wallpapered ceilings!:D

How long is a piece of string!, you need to get a few quotes for the work, I've done houses where there been 20 plus layers of wallpaper on the walls in one room.:eek:
Had one house, remove wallpaper, & ended replastering whole room, as the plaster came off in one large sheet with the wallpaper.

You just don't know what horrors could be lurking under that wallpaper.
 
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A friend just got quoted £1500 to strip, wallpaper and paint their 3 bed house. Included repainting all the doors, woodwork and ceilings.

No idea if that's a good price or not. I'd also assume price would depend on area of the country.
 
The fact you have so much wallpaper leaves me to think your plaster underneath is in pretty crap condition, wallpaper is used to hide a multitude of sins, most commonly the plaster underneath is ****ed.
In which case you'll need to reskim, pay for a lot of filling to be done by the deckie (which will only work if the walls aren't too knackered) or if you want to bodge it you could hang heavy gauge lining paper, fill the seams and paint that.

If your house is old it'll almost certainly require some serious work after the paper is stripped.

A decent decorator will charge around £100-125 a day, a really good decorator will charge more but the finish will be more high end and often a little quicker.
All decent decorators quote by the job, not by the day, hour or anything like that. And will supply proper trade materials.

How long it takes depends on how big the rooms are, how well the paper is stuck on and how bad the walls are underneath. You can't quote these things on the phone, you need to phone up known local deckies and get them in to quote.

Don't go for the cheapest quote, you'll likely get someone who got made redundant, bought some painters overalls and decided to call themselves a decorator instead of a trained professional.
 
How long is a peice of string?

Are you looking to save money by painting it yourself? and also farming out the hard work to others?
 
Thanks folks! Great info and advice so far.

I'm definitely thinking of having this done by a pro. No time to do it myself, especially with the kids etc.

I have no idea how many layers of wallpaper there are or what the underlying wall quality is, but the couple living there have been there for 40 years, so I doubt there would be too many because of that. Most likely 2-3 I'd guess? Will find out soon enough.

It's a low-priority job but if we're looking at around £1500-2000 or so as a ballpark that's not too bad I guess.

The main one for me is moving that boiler down into the kitchen. It worries me a bit why it's actually upstairs at all, and why it's in one of the bedrooms on the other side of the house from the kitchen and bathroom.... survey happening today so might find out about that.
 
A Full Structural Survey is only a visual inspection of the visible electrics, ie sockets, consumer unit, etc I believe.

It won't cover earthing or bonding,Insulation resistance, earth-fault loop impedance tests,etc.
 
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Nightglow said:
A Full Structural Survey is only a visual inspection of the visible electrics, ie sockets, consumer unit, etc I believe.

It won't cover earthing or bonding,Insulation resistance, earth-fault loop impedance tests,etc.
Click to expand...

Ah. Well perhaps I'll get someone in to give it all the once over after we've moved in. Would prefer to make sure that's all sorted before we're in for obvious safety reasons but what can you do!

Thanks,
 
£1500-2000?

Seriously doubt it mate, you'd be looking at that for prep and painting alone if your house is fairly small.

Stripping + prepping what are likely walls in bad condition? Add another grand at least, probably more.

Get it done room by room as and when you can afford it if you can't afford to spend several thousand at once. That way the cost won't hit you all at once and if you somehow get a dud deckie you can tell them where to go, and then find a better one.

If you've got a teenage lad in the family who wants to make a bit of cash for xbox games you could always pay him a few quid to strip the walls, might save you a bit. Although it'll be quicker to get a pro in.
 
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Aye it's not massive but not small either. 2 double beds, 1 small single/office, a living room and dining area (quite long) and a hallway plus stairs. Maybe we should realistically be looking at more like £3k here?
 
For 2-3k I would seriously be doing stripping myself then get someone in at that stage to sort the plaster if needed and then paint/paper myself. Seems madness to bring someone in when 80% of the work is not overly difficult, just time consuming especially after you have just spent thousands moving.
 
Don't get a decorator to strip the walls as you will be paying trade rates, as mentioned above you or someone you know must know a teen or maybve someone out of work who would do it for a few quid.

Either that or look in local paper for an odd job man or something similar will be far cheaper I would guess, I've actually seen people pay plasterers £120 a day to strip walls because they couldn't be bothered to do it themselves.
 
Thing is about paying painters/ plasterers to strip walls is that they do it really quick compared to what most people will. Used to take me a long old time before I was shown tricks of the trade.

It depends if you're in a rush or not.
 
I think we'll have to get someone pro to do it - we will be in a rush, since it will have to be done before we move in, so a matter of 6 weeks give or take.

I've also just discovered that these walls are actually most likely not regular wallpaper but the dreadded Artex.... which means that they might well be asbestos.......... yikes. I think we're going to be looking potentially at a total asbestos Artex removal here, along with plaster and paint job after. Would all need to be done professionally of course, and in under 6 weeks....

That said, the only way to find out if it's asbestos or not is to have it tested, so fingers crossed. There's a small chance it was put in after mid 80s/early 90s, which would mean it would be clean. Or it's not actual branded Artex but some alternative which should also be clean.

This is looking like a big job...
 
If it's artex have a plasterer come in and skim it instead of removing it.

Trust me, last time I went to remove artex I contemplated burning the house down so I wouldn't have to deal with it because it was just such a horrible pig of a job. Not to mention if you strip artex you'll almost certainly need to plaster after anyway because of how ****ed the surface underneath gets in the process.

Asbestos isn't an issue that way as well. You're looking at a few grand to skim + another few to decorate to do a whole house but it'll be good after.
 
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