Replies

1. 
   PD | Sep 20, 2005 01:18pm | #1

   I am sure it can be done but how much dust are you willing to tolerate and do really think you could get a even enough surface. I would think that even with the best dust collection system taking off a 1/2" of plaster is only asking for more problems than your solving. I would lean towards a skim coat to smooth out the surfaces or 1/4" drywall over it.

2. 
   Shep | Sep 20, 2005 04:05pm | #2

   How rough is the plaster? I agree with PD; grinding or sanding it off is going to make one he** of a mess, even with a vacuum connected. Skim coating is probably the simplest way.

   How old is your house? How much insulation is in the walls? In the long run, you might be better off ripping down the plaster, insulating, updating wiring, and installing new sheetrock.

   Do you live in NJ, or are you from here? I'm in South Plainfield. You should fill in your profile so we know a little about you.

1. 
   Elizabeth | Sep 20, 2005 04:38pm | #4

   Hi.  I'm the "DW."  I saw this open on the computer, so I decided to jump in and answer some of the questions.  (Hope you don't mind.)

   First of all, I don't necessarily want to sand down the stucco.  I just want to get rid of it one way or another.  It's really quite remarkably awful. 

   The stucco itself has very large swirls in it, and the pointy parts stick out over 1/2" from the base in many places.  Sheetrocking over it is not an attractive option, because if we did that, the surface of the wall would probably stick out past the window frames, etc.  We have the original chestnut woodwork, so I'd like to preserve that.

   It is an uninsulated 1924 house, so I absolutely agree that ripping down the plaster, insulating, updating wiring, and putting up new wallboard is the best solution.  Unfortunately, Jeff feels that that would be too big of a project.  Me, I'd rather do it right, even if it means waiting a bit or doing it a room at a time. 

   I only proposed sanding down the worst of it and skim-coating as an alternate solution because Jeff didn't seem too keen on the tearing down the walls idea.  I don't mind stucco--but this particular stucco is beyond hideous.  We even have a Spanish galleon molded into the stucco above the fireplace!!   I figured that if we sanded off the most sticky-outy parts of the existing stucco, and did a skim coat with a much more lightly textured stucco surface, we could solve the problem without worrying about making it 100% smooth.

   Shep--We're in Westfield, so howdy neighbor.

   Thanks for your help, everybody!

1. 
   PenobscotMan | Sep 20, 2005 04:52pm | #5

   Oooooh -- you gotta save the Spanish galleon!

   (I've added DW over bad plaster.  Had to remove and shim trim, but it wasn't too difficult.)

2. 
   FastEddie | Sep 20, 2005 05:05pm | #6

   I'm sure glad my DW doesn't read over my shoulder. 

   You might try using a chipping hammer to break off the biggest peaks, then skim coat.  The Bosch Bulldog would be one choice, there are others like Hilti that would work also.

   But I think you need to stand your ground and force Jeff ... I mean convince Jeff ... to pull it off and upgrade the walls.

     

   "When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it."  T. Roosevelt

3. 
   BryanSayer | Sep 20, 2005 05:24pm | #7

   This one, I've actually got experience at. And I am soooo with you Elizabeth. I hate texture on walls.So here is the amazingly simply solution: strip the wallpaper off that is underneath the texture. Everything will come with it.What? You don't have wallpaper underneath? Just about everyone else does!Ok, if you really do not have wallpaper underneath, we found the best solution to be carbide paint scrapers and elbow grease. Anything powered creates a huge mess, though one option I did not try is using the Festool paint striper which you can attach a vac to. If you try this, let me know how it goes.For spots that are really tough, I used the 3M sandblaster pads on a grinder. This sends dust everywhere because there is no vac attachment. And you can take divets out of the wall. Try the finest (green) first.Then you can cut holes and run the wiring and plumbing. Then patch the holes and skim over any remaining rough areas as the next to last step before painting. A rotary tool works well for cutting plaster and lath.Removing the plaster results in a lot of difficulties with the trim. Plaster walls are designed as a system with the door frames and window frames acting as grounds for the plaster. Then the trim is applied to a flush surface. So it is best to stay with plaster, and patch as needed.If you have a true Spanish style house, you might not have wallpaper underneath, but if the house has been remodeled, I'm betting there is wallpaper underneath at least some of the texture.

1. 
   Elizabeth | Sep 20, 2005 06:38pm | #8

   We definitely do not have wallpaper underneath.  And it's not a Spanish style house.  It's just a regular house square two-story house.  The realtors call it a colonial for lack of anything better to call it.  It has some nice Craftsman style details.  Why we have aggressive stucco and a Spanish galleon on the walls, I have no idea.

   I did just go do a little experiment with a hammer, a cold chisel, and a paint scraper.  The stucco layer came off pretty easily.  I was pleasantly surprised.  The cold chisel made quick work of the areas where it was good and stuck.  I made some divots in the plaster underneath, but nothing that couldn't be fixed easily with some patching compound. 

   I'm starting to think that a combination of approaches might be the best bet.  In some areas, like the high ceiling in the stairwell, we could really just drywall over it.  The stucco there isn't too deep, and there isn't any trim to worry about.  In other areas, like the interior stairwell wall that I just worked on, we could chip it off, and do a light skim coat to smooth it out.  On the outside walls, we could consider pulling the plaster down and re-drywalling, but if the chipping turns out to be pretty easy, we could leave it intact and do blown-in insulation later.  And of course we could sand/grind any tough spots.

   The nice part is that this is something we could do in sections.  We don't have to worry too much about damaging the floors, because they need to be replaced anyway.

   One major concern is lead paint, however.  We do have a 3-year-old.  The top layer seems to be latex paint, but there are certainly layers of lead paint underneath.  I'd imagine that chipping off the stucco would produce less lead paint dust than sanding it off, but I'd guess it would still produce a pretty significant amount. 

1. 
   Shep | Sep 20, 2005 07:08pm | #10

   Just read your last post. From your description of how it comes off, it sounds like that texturing might have been added on top of the original plaster- maybe to hide some cracks. 

2. 
   kate | Sep 21, 2005 02:14am | #12

   Elizabeth -

   I have a similar situation at "Really Old House".  Try spraying the wall with warm water, or warm TSP solution, as you scrape.  It will keep the dust down, control the lead problem, and may make the stucco scrape more easily.

   I am really excited about trying Dmix one of thes months!

   Congratulations, & good luck with your old house!

   Edited 9/20/2005 7:47 pm ET by kate

3. 
   DougU | Sep 21, 2005 02:38am | #13

   When you were describing the "stucco" it got me thinking about some really thick stuff that had been applied over my plaster walls in a previous house.

   I took a paint scraper and was able to scrape down the entire room(12 X 14) in about 2 hours. Its a coarser dust so it doesn't filter throughout the house as much as if you used a sander.

   I then skim coated the whole room and didn't have the hassle of dealing with trim.

   Doug

4. 
   BryanSayer | Sep 21, 2005 05:24pm | #16

   Any idea why the texture is there? And does it seem to be composed of something lime related (probably white) versus something mortar related (probably gray)? Is the texture pretty similar all over, or are there spots where it is different?The reason I ask is that it might reflect the underlying condition of the walls. If the texture is there because someone before you made a bunch of holes to run pipes or something, then what you will end up with after scraping might be much worse and require lots more patching than if someone just *liked* the texture (no accounting for taste, huh?).But the advice to just try some things and see how long it takes and what the final condition is is good.

5. 
   DonCanDo | Sep 22, 2005 02:38am | #19

   If you expose smooth plaster (not likely), you should prime it before skimming over with joint compound.  Or, if the exposed plaster can be rubbed off easily (sometimes it's just the sand/aggregate that continues to "dust" off), then that's another situation where primer can be useful.

   BTW, I'm in Scotch Plains, so we're really neighbors.  I work in Westfield frequently, so I'm familiar with the charms and trials of these older homes.

   -Don

4. 
   Shep | Sep 20, 2005 07:04pm | #9

   I work in Westfield quite often, so if you want me to come over sometime and look at things, give me a call.  908-561-8438

   But I'm still probably going to tell you to rip the plaster down. :)

   And I love chestnut trim. Is it natural now, or has it been painted over?

5. 
   florida | Sep 20, 2005 09:29pm | #11

   I had the exact same problem in a 1927 house we used to live in. The plaster points were so long and sharp they could hurt you. I got a steel floor scraper, put a sharp edge on it and went to scraping. It did not make it flat but it did remove the worst of the heavy texture and made the wall liveable. The long handle on the scraper allowed me to get my back in it so that it really didn't take that long.

3. 
   csnow | Sep 20, 2005 04:18pm | #3

   Sometimes easier to cover over the whole mess with a new layer of 3/8 drywall.  Downside is that trim may need to be adjusted to make things look right, but this sort of work is far less grueling (and less messy) imho.

4. 
   IdahoDon | Sep 21, 2005 04:22am | #14

   I'd replace the plaster with sheetrock as a first choice.  Having smoothed a number of plaster walls I don't know that you'll save all that much time by scraping.  The amount of mud required to cover course texture is enormous, let alone a wall as you've described.

   If the texture is too hard to scrape by hand I'd rent a small concrete grinder, install vent fans and plastic off each room as you do it.  The first warning that comes to mind is the liklihood that the plaster will crack if ground down so watch for that and stop if you're cracking anything.  Just painting over cracks is asking for trouble.  No, I take this entire paragraph back--I just couldn't get myself to grind old plaster over tearing it out.

   If you can scrape the high points down by hand then a good quality carbide scraper will make your life much easier.  A steel scraper will round off quickly so definitely get one with carbide.  With each hour of scraping, that's an hour that could have been used putting up new rock.

   Perhaps you should start by replacing the sheetrock in one room to see how long it takes and what the results are versus smoothing out the exsisting plaster.  I'd choose the room that would benefit the most from wall insulation and start taking down the plaster.  If you don't want to do it all, just do one wall at a time.

   Good luck!

   ~D

1. 
   jerseyjeff | Sep 21, 2005 03:41pm | #15

   My big issue is if I drop the walls,  I need to pull a permit AND redo all of the wiring in the house,  which is more than I really want to get into.   I am starting to think that I will have to drop the walls

    

5. 
   fingers | Sep 22, 2005 12:45am | #17

   I don't mean to burst your bubble because almost anything can be done, but wow, visibility will be severely compromised when you're going at those walls.  It'd be fun to watch (from a distance) though.

6. 
   fartherhome | Sep 22, 2005 01:25am | #18

   I had thick , rolled on goop on the ceilings in my house. I scraped the stallagtites as best  I could and skimmed ,and skimmed ,and skimmed. I wouldnt recomend sanding.