How to remove paper tape from the wood. Discover the correct procedure

How to remove paper tape from wood? There is no doubt about it: paper tape is one of the essential accessories in a workshop – or in a toolbox – belonging to lovers of DIY at home. It is a special adhesive tape which makes it possible to protect surfaces from processing being caried out in their immediate vicinity. For example, one of paper tape’s most classic uses: masking, the protection of doors, baseboards, and furniture during painting of a house’s walls. In that case, before getting to work with a roller, brush, and paint, it is fundamental to protect everything that should not be painted or gotten dirty using paper tape, painting cloths, old newspaper pages, and old sheets. Moreover, paper tape is also used in small DIY jobs, maybe when giving new life and polishing a table, a window, a cabinet, and so on. Once the work is finished, however, it is necessary to remove the paper tape from the wood. In most cases, if you have chosen a good quality masking tape, the removal will be quick, simple, and effective. In other, rarer, cases, you might encounter some issues: here is a complete guide on removing paper tape from wood!

Masking paper tape, a summary

Before outlining the steps to remove paper tape from wood, let’s quickly review the nature of paper tape, to understand how to best deal with this “rival”. This is a special adhesive tape with a paper support – whereas other adhesive tapes’ supports are made of plastic materials like PVC or PPL, just to mention the main ones – and with an underlying layer of adhesive. It is precisely this adhesive which, at times, makes it difficult to remove the paper tape from wood and other surfaces: low quality masking tapes, or old one, or even one which had been applied much earlier or exposed to direct sunlight, may release some adhesive residue upon removal. This is because, quite simply, the glue ends up detaching from the support, remaining attached to the underlying surface instead.

Keeping in mind that masking tape designed for construction, bodywork, and DIY is designed for temporary applications, and therefore should be removed in a short time frame, in this article we will have a look at how to remove the most difficult paper tape from wood.

How to remove paper tape from wood

Let’s consider an extreme case, which involves a particularly difficult removal of masking tape from a wooden surface. Let’s pretend that you had to re-paint the exterior of your house so, to you protected all the windows overlooking the balcony of the house with paper tape. And, let’s assume that, once you have finished painting, you forgot to take the masking tape off of a window, leaving it exposed to the Sun and the weather for weeks or months.

Here, in this case the removal could be difficult. In part because the paper tape could be particularly tough, very strongly “glued” to the wood; in part because the paper support may have lost its grip on its adhesive, which could then end up sticking to the wood itself. Our advice is, then, to arm yourself with hair dryer and plastic scraper.

Heat the paper adhesive tape with a stream of hot air for a few seconds, and then force its removal with the plastic scraper (or, should you not have one of them handy, with a fairly rigid plastic card). Doing so should be possible, and not too time-consuming. Should you need extra help with it, moisten the stubborn paper tape with water and vinegar, or with water and lemon.

How to clean glue residues from wood

Once you have removed old paper tape, you may notice some glue residue left on the wooden surface. Don’t worry: you can also remove the remaining glue using a mix of water and vinegar or water and lemon, or, to speed things up, solvent.

How to refine your work

In some – very rare – cases this procedure could slightly ruin the wood: those cases in which the surface of the painted wood was already ruined by wear and tear beforehand. In these cases, our advice is to go over the entire surface with a layer of wood finish, to eliminate any trace of the work you have done before, returning the window, door, coffee table, or furniture to its original glory.