Home Repairers,

I successfully closed on my house on Wednesday. I'll get some pictures posted this weekend.

I have a quick question. As I take down the very old wallpaper all over the house, it's leaving the wallboards in various states. I have some areas that are pretty smooth that I know if I just throw a layer of primer on before I paint then they'll be fine. I also have some areas where the wallboard(sheetrock?) is torn. On these areas, should I be plastering over them before I try to paint? I'm thinking I'm going to have to do some plastering since I have some small cracks.

What do you guys recommend?

Thanks for any/all the help.

Did you soak the wallpaper with water before you removed it? Soaking it releases the glue.

Get some Downy fabric softner and mix some of that with some warm water and spray on the wallpaper. Let it sit for like 30 minutes or longer and it should loosen up the paper. You may want to get some Spackling past, red lid, to fill in the torn drywall areas. Make sure the wallboard paper is off the wallboard before spackling (hard part of wallboard) because the paper will soak up the moisture in the spacking and it may crack and not hold and fall off. Then just sand after drying to match the rest of the wall.

spackling paste or joint compound...I've used both and I think its the same stuff, just a different brand name...get yourself one of those plastic putty knives as they work nicely for filling holes and scrape smoothly...this reduces the amount of sanding required. If someone left the joints between sheets of wallboard unfinished and just wallpapered over them you may have to get some paper tape to help cover the joints.

Thanks guys.

I did get a wallpaper remover concentrate that I'm sponging onto the paper before I remove it. I don't think I would have ever gotten it off without it.

I think I am going to have to get some of the spackling paste. There's really just a few areas where I have to clean up. Thanks.

If you have a lot of wallpaper to remove, a wallpaper steamer works well too.

Depending on how the previous owner put the wallpaper on, sometimes Downy, steamers, and the concentrate won't work.

If you damage the wallboard, you'll have to spackle/plaster it. My brother in law does drywall for a living and they call it a "Skim coat".

I did that once. Didn't really know the proper way to do it but a skim coat of light plaster and some sanding did the trick.

Real plastering is an art form. I just started on my own learning how to do it. Kinda sucks actually. There is a large bag at like Lowe's called "Diamond Brite" (sp?) that I use for plastering and is used for the so called Skim Coat. It dries real fast. Its not really like cement either where you can just put more water in the bucket and it will get soupy again. It will just get hard and thats it. So you have to be quick. Just use a cement flat trowel to apply. Don't use a fan or anything because that will incur cracking, let it normally dry. Good luck.

are you going to paint your walls... if so what color?? i have 3 black and 1 white wall in my room i love it because then i have tin signs and road signs it looks pimp as heck... also our computer room is a red .. its a really warm color ... and it looks really good with wood

Thanks everyone.

I picked up some spackling paste which worked out excellent for filling in the wallboard. Too me no time to get it done.

I've moved on to removing the paint that's on top of the very old wallpaper in the living room and hallway. I got this spray-on stripper that just makes the paint bubble up and it practically falls off the wall.