Hey let's paint over wallpaper glue

DIY DUDE

The things folks will do The folks that had this house before me pulled the wallpaper off the walls in 2 of the bathrooms and proceeded to paint over the glue. Yeah it look's like . The walls are plaster, what would be the best way to strip the walls back down to the plaster? I thought about skimcoating it, but I hate to work with mud.

ARI001

Use a sanding screen to remove the majority of the glue. Then skim coat the walls.

chrisn

If the PASTE, ADHEASIVE, has already been painted over, you will either have to sand it or skim it.

sdsester

And plan on chewing through a fair amount of sandpaper because it will clog and gum up quickly. A sanding screen or paint scraping disc will too unfortunately. The good news is it goes reasonably fast once you get going. I have a nice random orbital disc sander rube goldberged with exhaust tubing to a shop vac for such things.

Depending on how much you have, it might be faster to skim coat it?

ARI001

Running a power sander over drywall is risky business at best. I have seen many people try this and burn right through the paper. You will need to skim coat after sanding if you want a nice job. Sanding alone will not do the trick.

sdsester

Ooops. Good point. I forgot to mention that my sander is infinitely adjustable from a speed of zilch to whatever for this very reason. At the slower speeds it is like hand sanding but with more control and a larger surface area.

I agree you will probably find you need to so some skim coating or otherwise resurface even after you sand.

DIY DUDE

The walls are plaster so no worry about dry wall. I took a sanding block with 60 grit and went over a few spots to see how well it would work. It knocked it down pretty well. I can tell that I'm still going to have to skim coat a lot of it though. I'd rather take a butt kicking than have to mess with the mud.
I ran into a guy that I worked with on a large commercial project and all he does is sheetrock and plaster repair, I got his number, so I think I'm going to have him look at it and see what he thinks. I may just get him to skim coat it, I'm too doggone heavy handed to do it.

chrisn

Good plan.

ccarlisle

A question to guys who would do a skim coat in this situation: what would you use? regular joint compound or something home-made? as-is or diluted a bit?

I may have to do this - and the thought isn't a happy one...

ARI001

Do not dilute your mud. I in general prefer heavyweight for taping and base coat applications and lightweight for skim coats. If you are not well experienced doing mud work used the premixed joint compound and avoid using chemical drying mud (hot mud, quick drying). Don't forget to lightly sand the skim coat as well (150-180 grit if your good 100-120 grit if not).

Matthewt1970

I agree. Do not dilute your mud.

ccarlisle

Thanks, guys!

DIY DUDE

Another SR finisher on that job told me that he had used flour in a pinch before, LOL!

Ghoward46

You'll have to remove as many high spots as possible by sanding followed by a skim coat using lightweight drywall compound. Sand until smooth, prime and paint. When I remove wallpaper I wash off as much paste as I can. It's nearly impossible to remove every bit of the adhesive so before I paint I apply an OIL BASED primer. Oil based primers won't activate the paste like water based latex primers and paints.

Brushjockey

The original post was from 09- I think they have moved on...

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