Decorating question . . .

MehulLakhani

MehulLakhani

MehulLakhani

Associate
Joined
12 Jan 2003
Posts
1,227
Location
Watford
Hi everyone.

I am getting my old place done up at the moment. The only problem is that the walls in the living room and the corridor are horrible. About 10 years ago, we had then lined with lining paper, and then painted over the top.

This year, in my infinite DIY wisdom, I tried to paint over them, but unfortunatley, the two coats of white+topcoat must have soaked into the paper, and its all started to bubble, and look horrible at the edges. Because the paper is old it isnt flexible anymore, so you cant even get rid of the bubbles, and lifting edges.

I am having the bathroom redone next week, and the people doing that have offered to skim over the walls with plaster, but they want to skim over the horrible lining paper - he said something about putting down some unibond, and then skimming over.

This sounds very wrong to me . Anyone else in the trade/know who can advise ? They want £500 to do this to the living room ( smallish ), and the hallway ( again, smallish). Is this a good price ? Do you think its worth paying someone to come in and strip off all the lining paper, and then just paint on the bare wall ?

R

Mehul
 
You can strip the paper yourself, give somewhere like Harlow Hire or HSS and see what they can lend you to strip the walls yourself. It's not a difficult job, yes time consuming, but I think it would be better to go back to plain walls then work from there.
 
im not in the trade but people i know have done it the other way round, removed the lining paper, filled in the holes then had it skimmed, then either painted or covered again with lining paper. i suspect if you had issues covering the paper with paint then it will be similar with the plaster? but i guess it depends on the health of the walls underneath, i've lived in houses that the most solid thing was the woodchip wallpaper!

nin9a
 
You can buy a steam wallpaper stripper from Homebase fro £20 (like I did yesterday) and strip the wallpaper off. If the wall isn't too bad then just fill any cracks/holes with polyfilla and sand the whole thing down with an orbital sander (also £20ish from Homebase).

This will remove any excess wallpaper paste and give you a decent surface for painting, easy as you like.

It's only if you've got any big cracks or holes that you need to get it skimmed.
 
£500 sounds expensive to me.

Get a steam stripper ( I bought a Bosch one for £30ish which works better than a cheapo I had before (no idea why).

I also got a perforating thing. triangular with 3 pairs of serrated wheels under neath on castors. Just roll it around the wall, helps the steam penetrate and lift the paper.

Then lightly sand the walls with an orbital as suggested before using fine paper and paint.

Much cheaper, less messy and probably quicker too.
 
unless the walls *really* need sanding don't use a power sander. Coarse grit paper on a block works as quickly and makes far, far, far less mess (talking from experience...).
 
Sounds like a total cowboy to me, PVA (Unibond) is seem by some as a cure-all, but that's just a short-cut to a botch job.

You need to remove the lining paper first (steamer will get it off no problem, we bought a cheap one years ago and it's worth it's weight in gold).

Even then I'd check to see if the existing plaster has blown (come away from the brickwork behind in), as skimming over blown plaster is throwing money away.

If after removing the lining paper you're back to bare plaster, then if you've got a reasonable finish, I wouldn't sand it directly. I'd apply a mist coat of watered down emulsion first, then a _very_ light sanding, and then wipe down and paint.

We've just had to have every room in our new house completely replastered (not just skimmed), having had to remove all the old, blown plaster, and it cost £2700 (for a 3-bed semi), which is very reasonable.
 
Von Luck said:
If after removing the lining paper you're back to bare plaster, then if you've got a reasonable finish, I wouldn't sand it directly. I'd apply a mist coat of watered down emulsion first, then a _very_ light sanding, and then wipe down and paint.
Click to expand...

Would you not sand first to remove any excess adhesive?

I've going to be going this in the next few was on the wall and also, horror, on the ceiling where the last owners put up polystyrene tiles. Given that they are likely to leave quite a lot of old glue behind wouldn't sanding first be a good idea?
 
DO NOT plaster over the top of lining paper.

Look what it did to your paint, it will just suck the moisture out the plaster in a similar way and it will look BAD!

Either strip the walls down bare or maybe plasterboard the walls then then skim them.

I would probably strip the walls.
 
hi im a decorator by trade, reccomend you wash walls with sugar soap once you get the paper off,gets rid of paste and leaves a better surface for painting
 
another vote for sugar soap, cheap and does what it says on the tin :)

so recap, strip, sugar soap, get two more quotes then reskim!

allways get three quotes preferably from recomended peps

where are you? if your around the southampton area I can recomend someone!
 
The only good thing about skimming over paper is that it's easy to remove the plaster again when it cracks up, as it undoubtedly will! Some genius plastered over paper in my hallway/staircase, in an attempt to stick the wall back together. I ended up completely removing all the plaster, down to the bare granite and mud (really, they used to use mud to hold the walls together, rather than mortar) then having it totally rendered and replastered.

Strip the paper off, and check the condition of the plaster. If it's "blown" (rap the wall with your knuckles, listening for hollow spots), you should really hack the blown bits off before replastering.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom