Steam cleaner wallpaper stripper
So a steam cleaner wallpaper stripper is my hot gizmo tip of the moment, you betcha.
I’ve been looking around for a wallpaper stripper for ages, I knew that the dreaded wallpaper stripping was lurking on the horizon and I wanted to get through the task as easily as possible. When I was a little boy, a long long long time ago 🙂 wallpaper stripping was a job we undertook once every two years or so. The task was pretty horrific as the only things we had to do the job were a springy butter knife – to prise and scrape loose the paper – and a bucket of water (with a dash of malt vinegar – yuk) with a sponge to loosen the paper before scraping away with the knife. Yes times were tough and my job climbing up chimneys cleaning them wasn’t much fun either.
Anyway I knew that in these future times there were such things as steam strippers, strippers to replace the bucket of vinegary torture. In researching these strippers I’d looked around for a while and the only ones I could see looked pretty Heath Robinson affairs, I’m sure they did their job but they just didn’t inspire confidence. They would generally just look like a plastic tub with a kettle element in and a health and safety waiver glued to them.
Meanwhile while looking my sister kept asking me if I’d got around to using my Karcher Steam Cleaner she’d loaned to me. I’d mention stripping and she’d say how about the Karcher and I’d ignore her. Anyway one fruitless day of looking for a steam stripper and it suddenly dawned on me, hey I could use that Karcher. A bit more investigating and there’s a suitable Karcher paper stripper head that I subsequently ordered and hey presto a stripper that works and doesn’t look lethal.
I powered it up and WOW there’s a proper metal pressure vessel with a safety screw lid and a thermostat, nothing like the one my mate has, he referred to as “it gets the job done but you have to be committed to do the work there and then, it’s not stopping and it looks as though it was built in an Eastern Block country where health and safety were long dreamed of ideals of the future”. The Karcher works, it’s safe, the controls make sense, it gives a great wallop of steam and it inspires confidence… the attachments fit and work confidently too. I applied it to my paper, held down the trigger, held it over one spot for ten seconds and then slowly moved the head along the paper. Bingo loose paper and scraping a doddle, no springy butter knives though, a proper scraper and although still a tiresome job it is much much easier, I can’t imagine many other steamers being as good.
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