Hi. I first came to the forum a couple of days ago. I asked a question at that time, and was told it might be a while before it was posted.
I still cannot find my question anywhere, so I’ll ask it again. I’m redecorating my study. The walls and ceiling have been papered. I would REALLY prefer to paint over the paper, if I can get away with it.
In my prowls through the threads, I have heard from one guy in the UK who said most of the paper there is made to be painted over, and another guy said he had used a stain blocking primer, which I had figured in the first place.
But I really would like to get a range of opinion, as I read a lot of discussion on HOW to remove paper. Do you really have to, always?
Some of the walls, and the ceiling were board, some drywall. The house is a Victorian, built 1881.
I’m trying to figure out how to navigate around all the subjects.
Replies
Is the paper still tight to the ceiling and wall? What's the condition of the seams?
Do it right, or do it twice.
My thanks to all.
Seems at least one person has painted over paper for twenty years. The consensus seems to be that this is corner cutting. Well, as a professional electrician I have fussed and railed about corner cutters for decades.
Let me add some more details. The paper is very well hung. It was done by my wife, who was not then my wife. It was put up with lining paper over bare boards. The house is 122 years old. It is quite tight over most of it's surface. In places, as in a couple of corners, it is not. My thought was to cut and remove all of these loose areas, and then hit them with a skim coat of drywall mud. Mud and tape in the corners.
Then, Olympic Seal Zall (I hate that cutesy crap) Premium claims it can be used over paper. It's the only primer carried by Lowe's to make that claim.
The whole subject is a difficult one to raise with my wife. She loves the paper. I hate it. The room was once a bedroom, and is now my study. All my stuff is in here, and removing the paper would be a huge chore.
I'm a professional electrician, and I pride myself on meeting or exceeding the code on all my jobs. I'm not a drywaller, paperhanger, or painter, and if somebody hates me after I die, what do I care?
Best I can tell, this is a "luck of the draw" issue.
I've painted lots of papered rooms in rentals that I owned. In many cases, it worked beautifully (at least for the 10 to 20 years of my ownership.
But in the other cases, the paper subsequently peeled or curled, or the paint did. And the problem is that it is even more difficult to remove paper that has been painted. It's more brittle, and won't easily come off in large pieces. Further, you can't steam it, or spritz it unless you first score it.
Based n those few bad-luck experiences, I no longer paint over paper. But you can make your own mind......
The house we bought had wallpaper that had been painted over. It had begun to peel slightly at the seams, and looked terrible, so we scraped the paper off. That was a job. I spent weeks cursing the former owner who had painted over the wallpaper, as I slowly scraped away the mess. Scoring and soaking the paper did little to help, I mostly scraped it off dry. It was slow and tedious. The bare plaster walls now look much better painted than the painted paper walls did.
Yes, you can paint over the paper, but if it ends up looking bad, you will wish you had scraped it off in the first place.
Odds are very good that the drying paint will cuase ANY of the paper that is not PERFECTLY adhered to pull away from the wall.
But even if you are lucky enough to get a good paint job on these walls and/or can ignore a minor seam or two standing out, someday you or another person will come to hate you for this. Removing wall paper is hard enough, but removing paper that has been painted over is three times as hard. The reason is that you need to use steam or a liquid remover or both to loosen the adhesive paste. Paint makes it much harder to get that vapor in behind the papaer
Excellence is its own reward!
A top-quality base on plaster walls -- and ceilings for that matter -- for wallpaper in the UK used to be lining paper then a coat of paint to seal it.I think you're missing the point -- properly done, there's no need to strip the painted layer of paper. Successive layers of paper will strip off without disturbing the base.
IanDG
Maybe I did miss something but I don't remember any indication in the original thread that his paper was that well done. I phrased my response to let him know that either way is dependent on the quality of what he has now, which I cannot see..
Excellence is its own reward!
I used waterbase paint on a paper ceiling, it loosened the glue and the paper kept dropping, I'd roll it some more, the glue got sticky and it finally stay'd up. Should not have that problem with a different solvent, I'd think.
dickd
Go to a paint store, (not a hardware or big box store), and ask them for the right primer to "lock down" the wallpaper. Then you can paint over it. It must NOT be water based as that will often reactivate the glue and cause bubbling or worse.
I understand why you would want to simply paint over because stripping wall paper is a pain. Painting over it in my opinion is a short cut. Never seen any painted over paper that looked good... though if I did I guess I wouldn't know it anyway.
Either way you're looking at an afternoon of stripping the wall-paper and a few hours of additional prep, call it a full day to get ready for paint without the paper
AND you have a much better long-term chance that the walls will look good in a few years. if they don't, then you have a lot more trouble taking it down later then you do now.
Don't take the short cut because it seems easier now, it could bite you later.