need help with wallpaper adhesive removal before repainting

We are having trouble removing the adhesive and wallpaper borders from walls in several rooms. The two we've begun with were papered about 17 years ago, over a painted wall. My mom did most of the work, and I'm not sure if she used border paste, regular paste, or a combo of a few things. She may have used sizing on some of it. I do remember her commenting on how she had to use extra adhesive to make the ends and certain areas stay put.

On one room it comes off fairly easily after removing the top layer and then using hot water to dampen well before peeling and carefully scraping. But it still leaves a LOT of glue left on the wall that is not coming off with any scrubbing or scraping without peeling some of the drywall with it.

On the other room, it's even worse. Most of the border (again, applied over painted wall) comes off very stubbornly in small pieces and leaves a lot of residue that is extremely difficult to scrape off without damage.

So what to do? It might take a million years to get this all off, and even then, what next? How do the walls need to be prepped in order to apply fresh paint, or even texture (if I must go that route due to too much damage from scraping.) I'm guessing there can't be ANY glue residue left on the wall before priming or texturing it?

The pros here might have some tricks but I have just skimmed it with drywall filler.

I would just prime the border with Gardz(or oil primer),skim over it still smooth, prime again and paint. Home owners often applied "border paste", which was real glue and it was not on top of other wall paper , then it is stuck forever.

Chris, are you saying not to try to remove remove the border, but rather to just paint over it with gardz? Is that similar to Kilz paint?

Growheirlooms said:

Chris, are you saying not to try to remove remove the border, but rather to just paint over it with gardz? Is that similar to Kilz paint?

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yes and no to the Kilz(unless you use oil based Kilz)