Skim-coating over paper?

[Victoria2393]

Hi Folks,

We just bought our first house, a 1947 cape-cod-style with 1.5 stories. While the ground floor walls are plaster, the upper floor is finished with something else. Throughout the two dormer rooms, hallway, and closet, every wall, ceiling, and angled dormer ceiling/wall is covered with paper with overlapping seams about an inch thick every two feet, and tape seams over the joints. This has all been painted over many times, most recently with high gloss paint.

We began scraping the paint off, which is remarkably easy. Beneath it is fairly smooth brown wallpaper backing, and beneath that is a very rough, thick, dark brown paper that is bonded to the wall boards. The seams everywhere are caused by overlapping of the smooth paper, and are actually printed with directions that say "join here" and apprise us that the product is washable, union made, and won't fade in the sun! When we pull these seams off, we get to the fuzzy brown paper beneath. There is no way that any of this can be sanded smooth.

Some of the wall panels show some damage and will probably have to be replaced with something, but we don't really want to drywall over the entire upper floor of our house-- besides the expense and difficulty, it would be hard to deal with the built-in drawers and trim-- so we are thinking we'll have to seal these papery walls and skim-coat everything. This is new water to tread, for us.

I'll attach a photo, and a link to a photobucket with a bunch of photos of these walls. If anyone can give us advice on how to handle this-- what kind of products to use, where to start, where to look for technical directions-- we will really appreciate it.

Thanks for your help, K & T

Victoria_2393/Second Floor Nightmare - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

[Drywall DIY Guy]

I would tear it down

I know that is not what you want to hear. But that is what I would do.

I made the mistake of trying to fix up a bad drywall job in our basement, and it was no where near the mess you have. The result was more work than starting with new drywall and I ended up with a finished product (3/8" drywall 24" on center) that still did not look right. And I am considering tearing it down and starting over.

If you want this to look good and all get done "relatively" quickly, tear it down and replace the drywall yourself, and hire a taper to finish. A lot of labor is in the demolition and drywall installation so you will save here since you can achieve the same results as a hired person. The professional taper can work much much faster and give you a nice finished wall, so money spent on this part of the job is worth it.

If you can't afford a taper, then do one room at a time, starting with your most least-visited room or closet. Go to Taping Drywall Step by Step Instructions - How To Tape Drywall for step-by step instructions on taping. Take your time, and you can get good results.

[Victoria2393]

update on the project

After removing the paint from the first room, we discovered that the only area with any real damage is the corner shown in the picture. The rest of them seem to be perfectly sound. We will need to redo the drywall in that corner, but we don't think we'll need to do all of it.

Any ideas about what we can use to smooth out the surface on the walls that are structurally ok but have messy, uneven paper-covered surfaces?

Thanks,
K & T

[truemanr]

Sheetrock is the answer

1/4 sheetrock, glued over the exsisting problem is the cleanest solution. Your idea about a skim coat will work, but you'll most likely needed to hire a pro for good results. 1/4 rock is cheap, reasonablely light and remarkably easy to work.

[jamestiato]

Thanks – this looks like a great site for anyone who wants to become lovable.
Again thanks a lot!

[HayZee518]

What you have is the old style sheetrock - gypsum wallboard. typical sheetrock doesn't have any fillers but the old style had horsehair inside along with the plaster. this all was sandwiched between inferior grades of cardboard. it was cured much like the old adobe bricks - in the sun under pressure. I agree using quarter inch sheetrock and by using a professional taper. only thing is with using quarter inch thick "rock" if there's any dips in the wall, the sheetrock will follow these dips and valleys. you may have to fill in the dips with sheetrock mud and then sand smooth to give you a straight wall finish.