Fixing prior stupidity

Hello all. Question. I recently moved into a house; it's an old house. It is obvious that in the master bedroom there used to be a border that ran about 5 feet above the floor all around the room. That border, however, was painted over by the previous owner of the house. It's presence is nevertheless obvious because there is a 10 inch wide line that goes all around the room.

I want to repaint the walls but I realize that if I just throw another layer of paint over the wall I'll still have that half-assed look of a border painted over. So I need to go under the several coats of paint that are over the border now and peel the border off. The problem will be of course that instead of having a small elevation in the wall where the border is, if I remove it I will have a small indentation. Does anyone have an idea of how to take care of this problem?

 

You have 2 choices,

You can spackle the edge where the border paper meets the painted wall, prime, sand and paint or you can score thru the paint and border face to allow moisture to get to the backing and the adhesive to remove the border.

The 1st option is a lot easier but there is always the chance that later on the adhesive might fail and the border w/paint will come loose

The 2nd is a lot more work but is the right way to do it
You will likely have to repair some of the drywall after removal - not major, just cuts and scrapes.