How To Remove Wallpaper Glue

Rice is perfect medium for bowl of gumbo

From picking the crabs just so to cooking the okra just long enough to remove the slime factor, there is a lot to it. Not to mention, it can also get very expensive.

Indeed, a well-crafted cauldron of gumbo is a thing of beauty forever.

But it occurred to me last week that there is another part of the gumbo offering that gets short shrift, overlooked often in the whole flavorful saga that is gumbo.

It’s that white, fluffy stuff that goes into the bowl before the gumbo — rice — that is the unsung hero of the dish. Without rice, gumbo would be, well, soup.

Making a pot of rice can be one of the more daunting kitchen tasks, especially for kitchen novices. It easy to mess up, and there is a bit of math involved, but I’m going to teach you a quick, easy, no-fuss way to make perfect rice every time.

But before we do that, let’s first talk about rice a bit. There are several varieties of rice available at the grocery store and selecting the best one for your kitchen application can be unsettling.

Indeed, rice comes in may forms. You can buy everything from rough rice and brown rice, to plain white rice and black rice. There is red rice, sweet rice, arborio rice and basmati rice. There is even such a thing as wild rice, which isn’t rice at all.

For purposes of this discussion, we will limit our focus to plain old polished white rice. Even then, it comes in different sizes — short, long and medium grain.

I prefer medium grain rice in a gumbo, because the grains puff up, the perfect medium for a gumbo. The thick gumbo juice sticks to the grains just right.

Let’s stop right here for a second. If you own an electric rice cooker (and why don’t you?) then making perfect rice every time is easy. Add rice and water according to directions and you’re set. (We own three of them, and they are indispensable; they also make a great Father’s Day gift — hint, hint.)

If you don’t have one, don’t fret. Making rice on the stove like cooks have done for centuries isn’t that difficult. It’s just water, rice and that’s it.

The biggest pitfall for novice rice cooks is ending up with gummy rice, rice that looks like wallpaper paste.

Rest assured, gummy rice won’t kill you, it’s just not nearly as good as fluffy rice. I’ve eaten more than my share of the gummy kind over the years, and I’m still here.

How to remove wallpaper

Painting Wallpaper

Don’t do it! It rarely looks right, the paper can peel, you can see the seams. Its best to remove the paper. The next homeowner will thank you.

The key to wallpaper removal is to loosen the glue. The glue can be softened by using products such a DIF® Wallpaper Stripper (available at True Value ). You can also use warm water with some vinegar.  The commercial products are more effective and comes in a gel which clings to the wall better.

The issue is how to get the stripper to the glue. Some wallpaper is vinyl. Vinyl wallpaper is great in that its easy to clean, that also makes it harder to remove.

First try to just peel it off. You may find that the paper or vinyl facing comes off. That’s fine. Once that is off the stripper can do its job.

If the vinyl facing does not peel off you will need to score it with a wallpaper stripping tool. These tools perforate the wallpaper face yet leave the wall board or plaster undamaged.

If you have a large area you may want to consider buying, or renting, a wall paper steamer. Wagner has one at True Value that is effective and doesn’t cost much more than a weekends rental.

Once all the paper is off and the walls have been cleaned of any glue residue you are then ready for painting or new wallpaper.

We were one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. We have been compensated for our time commitment to the program as well as our writing and productions about our experience. We have also been compensated for the materials needed for our DIY project. However, as always, our opinions are entirely our own and we have not been paid to publish positive comments.

I have used a drapery steamer, anything that emits steam and a 6″ putty or drywall taping knife to scrape of the wallpaper. The idea is to get the wall paper off without compromising the drywall. You will probably have to skim out the rough spots with drywall all purpose compound, sand , and shoot texture or use one coat of primer if you are going to install new paper.