"K. G. Ulicni" wrote in message
...
I have a house built in the early 1920's. Every wall in every room was
wallpapered with the paper applied over the bare plaster, multiple
layers no less. No paint, no primer just plaster. It was a major pain
to get all the paper off those walls, lots of scrapes and gouges left
behind to patch when done. Was this a common practice back then?

Yes, of course, but all you have to do is spray the paper with water, wait
1-2 minutes, then scrape it off with no gouging. Why is this so difficult
for people to do? My house is nearly 200 years old and it only takes (took)
about 8 hours to scrape each room down to the bare plaster. And that was
only because the previous owners (morons) allowed multiple layers of paper
to build up. We stripped off all the old and put up new wallpaper in each
room. And no, we didn't treat the walls. We used the strippable stuff, so
the few rooms we've wanted to re-decorate since then had the wallpaper
removed in about 20 minutes.