wallpaper woes, and slows everything else

[txrigdiver]

I've just started working on the last house I bought doing about a 50K to 60K rehab and trying to save money everywhere I can. Almost every wall in this house has wallpaper on it. freaking ugly wallpaper I might add. I've had other properties that maybe a room or two has wallpaper and I've always had it pulled off, the wall textured and then repainted. Pulling wallpaper off every wall in a 3200 sq ft house is going to be very labor intensive and therefore expensive. Before I ever dreamed about being a REI I painted over the wallpaper in my kitchen and it looks pretty bad.
I'm interested in finding out what you would do with a house that is covered in wall paper that has to go.
Would it be easier just to put up a different wallpaper up?
What about texturing it and painting over it.
Whether I go with paint or wallpaper, there is going to be a lot of prep work. I know the prep work for painting, What prep work would I have to do if I just put wallpaper back up?
I figure the cost of labor to remove all the wall paper, texture the walls and then paint would cost about the same as removing all the wall paper now and if there's no other prep work that needs to be done, just putting up another layer of wall paper. Better yet, can I put new wallpaper up over the existing wallpaper? this is a high end house, were going to be asking between $380 to $350K when it goes to market.

[Dan Auito]

If you have that much wallpaper I would call in a wallpaper removal crew to get it done. A house of this size with this much paper to be removed could be bid out. The price you payed for it hopefully is low enough to allow you to do this.

This is a mindless labor job and the workers that contractors would employ are going to be working real cheap and most likely very fast and efficient. Check into bidding it out.

[Aldo]

Removing wallpaper is really more time-intensive than labor-intensive, in my opinion. The first thing I do is peel it away as best I can. Then, if you properly score the paper and really soak it with water, the wallpaper scrapes off rather easily with a wide putty knife. The trick is to wait for the water to soften the glue and that's where time becomes an issue. I find doing about 4 square feet at a time works best.

If, on the other hand, you are paying someone to do this, you might, instead, consider applying 1/4" drywall. The drywall may cost a bit more, but you'll have virtually brand new, perfect walls.

You appear to already know the adding another layer of wallpaper or, worse, painting the existing wall paper is not a good plan.