Tim Downie wrote:
Many moons ago, we redecorated our younger daughter's room by peeling
off the exisiting vinyl wallpaper and simply painting over the
remaining layer of paper.

Fast-forward a good few years and we're trying to remove that thin
layer of painter paper. No amount of perforating, soaking, steaming
or blow-torching (you can tell I'm getting a little desperate) will
enable us to scrape off this wretched stuff at a rate faster that 1
square foot every 20 minutes to half an hour!

I don't know whether it's simply the effect of the paint making the
paper waterproof of some strange paste used many years ago before we
bought the house.


Have you tried one of those wire scratchy pad things (technical term) from
B&Q etc.? They're supposed to work well. Also, soak the stuff for ages after
it's all scratched up - 20 minutes or so. Ok, not ages, BYKWIM.

Si