September 03, 2007
Welcome to the seventh edition for 2007.
As you may have noticed, you are not getting an issue every month. I am spacing them out a bit more, and publishing when I can get the time. Summer has been busy! How about you?
I hope you will find this issue helpful as you read about some pitfalls one encounters sometimes in remodeling or plaster repair projects.
Features:
--- l. Dealing with old plaster that is covered with wallpaper
--- 2. Wedding News!
--- 3. The weather?
--- 4. Free ecourse
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Does this describe you? You have some major defects in that old plaster wall or ceiling that you want to fix. You start and then discover that everything is locked up tight (more or less) with one or more layers of painted wallpaper.
What to do?
I have had many tough experiences with this problem, and I continue to run into it now and then, even this week.
I show up to work on a kitchen - dining room combination. Old walls have been moved, some new walls build, a skylight has been put in, and there is now a continuous ceiling that extends into the living room and entry hall.
Two major problems. The living room ceiling is sand-textured plaster that over the years has received many coats of paint. The sand is muted and will be difficult to match in the untextured dining room - kitchen ceiling areas. The second problem is that most of the old ceiling area in the kitchen/dining area has multiple layers of wallpaper all painted and smooth.
Wherever new drywall has been put in ceiling patched areas, it abuts to the older plastered surface where the wallpaper is. I can't tie the new to the old without a solid, sound surface on the old to tape and bride onto. So the paper has to come off, at least back a foot or more on the areas where I will be applying paper joint tape.
Questions to answer
Can I remove the old painted wallpaper far enough to tape onto the exposed plaster, and do I have to take ALL the wallpaper off in all the remaining area?
In the past, I have had poor luck trying to work directly over painted wallpaper. The customer might assure me that it's tight and won't bubble if I put mud on it, but don't bet your life on it.
So my usual approach is to try to get the customer to take off all the paper before I do my thing. This week, however, I didn't have that luxury. The customer had to head off for work, and I needed to start my part of the project immediately, otherwise the subcontractors coming in after me would be unhappy with their schedules screwed up.
So, go to it. I tested the painted paper with water to see if it would soften any. It did, but not much. I used a stiff bladed taping knife to dig in and begin to remove what I could.
The long and short of it is, I spent about three hours removing just enough paper around my drywall-plaster junctions that I could start taping and finishing those joints without mudding onto the papered parts. By the end of my first day, I had, using hotmud,
--- taped and first coated the interior of the skylight
--- put metal corner bead on all drywall corners (including around the bottom of the skylight well) and mudded them, one coat
--- taped and mudded all drywall/plaster seams, including some miscellaneous plaster ceiling cracks. Taped and finished the new wallboard on the walls.
--- taped and mudded three places where old lights had once been (customer put in the drywall plugs)
--- checked to see if the remaining wallpaper was really tight (so it seemed)
Day #2 I returned to do the final soft coat over all my metal and joints. All looked good, but the acid test comes the next day.
Day #3 Now my challenge is to texture all the kitchen-dining ceiling (walls to remain smooth). I decided since the existing living room ceiling is sand many times painted, and no longer "sharp", I would go with a finer grade quartz sand for the kitchen/dining ceiling, specifically #70 mesh.
So, I followed my old recipe and made up a slurry of joint compound, texture compound, and PVA drywall primer, plus the sand. Ratios? About three fourths mud, one fourth primer. And a dribble or more of sand. For spreading this as texture, I like to use a little paint roller, about three or four inches wide. I have more control that way.
I started by trying to see how the rather extensive areas of papered ceiling would take the texture. Not good. No bubbles in the paper (yet) but the slick paint wouldn't grab my texture mix off the roller very well. The roller just wanted to slide around and give me a very uneven application. I needed a plan B for those parts of the ceiling.
I turned my attention to the skylight interior. My texture there went on beautifully (if I say so myself), and the same on the raw drywall of the ceiling patches. As I worked, I was thinking about the remaining papered areas and I got an idea.
Plan B
To get a stickier mix to work with, I got some old latex paint from home and just poured some into my paint tray. Then I stirred in some light sand with my taping knife and tried it out. Whoa!! It worked great. The paint went on easily and the sand stuck evenly to the old paint.
All went well until I got to a corner and suddenly I had an area about 20 inches square where the paper started bubbling. I pulled it off where I could, mudded over it to smooth it out. I came back the next day to texture that, which went fine.
Lesson learned? I was lucky. The old paper allowed me to texture over it without bubbling, except for the one place, which I was able to correct. In the past, the same attempt to texture over paper had often resulted in many blisters across the whole field, an endless headache to cut out, patch, and feather in new texture.
So ... in general, don't try to work over old paper. I have had maybe a half dozen such projects turn out well, in over 30 years. Pay the price and get the blankety-blank stuff off!
2. Wedding News! Yes, we had a wedding in the family. Our one and only daughter tied the knot with her fiancee. She turns 31 this fall, so my wife and I were getting a little nervous - we wished her settled and happy, and so it has come about.
The newlyweds called early this week from Hawaii. They are on a cruise boat going around the islands, and are having a great time, they say. We are looking forward to seeing them (and their photos) when they get back to Oregon.
Our daughter, to her credit, is a terrific gal and is one of those who is just not going to be rushed into anything. She has a good man, and he will make her happy (we pray). The next step will be house hunting. We wish them the best.
3. Summer time is drawing to a close, although don't tell that to people in the South and Southwest. They might have trouble believing it. We in our part of the Pacific Northwest (western Oregon) have been enjoying a very pleasant summer. Only a few hot days. Unusually cool, for the most part. Being only an hour from the coast, we tend to get a nice temporing breeze in the evenings, especially on hot days. No AC for us.
4. Free ecourse. A couple of months ago or so, I put together a 10 day email course for people who just needed a quick overview of the whole subject of plaster repair and renovation. I highlight 10 Common Mistakes people can make as they get into wall and ceiling repair.
HOW TO REPAIR YOUR PLASTER RIGHT is available without charge at
Try it out, if you like, or refer it to a friend. Thanks!
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I hope your summer has been a good one for you, and that you have had time for some rest and relaxation with family and friends.
May you prosper in all your ventures --- especially those home repair projects!
Until next time
Edwin Brown aka plasterguy
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