Any chance you could move your son out of the house for a few days?

You could find a substitute for the oil based primer, but you can't avoid the sanding.

You could stop the project now, put the house up for sale as is and post a large sign that the walls will be finished at closing and the buyer has the option to choose the paint color.

I am not a pro but have used a couple water-based products recommended here and elsewhere. Although your painter is probably only comfortable with his own tried and true methods.

There's a product called Peel Stop by Zinsser. You have to scrape the loose paint off first. Remove as much of the adhesive as you can too. I guess after that you'd have to apply their Gardz primer to deal with any leftover wallpaper paste. Peel Stop will reactivate it but the Gardz is for left over residue before repainting. This is something for your painter to research. There might be reasons not to use them or use them on plaster.

Trouble is, you have to fill the unlevel imperfections, so the sanding dust is still a problem, as already pointed out.

I wouldn't paper again (mess for the new owners). I think offering to paint after moving is great for the new owners so they can have what they like from the beginning and not have to worry about changing things. I'd clean up the walls first though so not to scare anyone off and to have a better idea on costs to get them ready and that variable out of the way.

Good luck! Bad walls are no fun!

This post was edited by snookums2 on Wed, Apr 10, 13 at 9:11

Thanks for the info. I can't move my child out of the house for a variety of reasons. We're stuck with this messy situation!

Our realtor says we shouldn't try to sell the house the way it looks now, as the walls are in the front hall, and they look terrible, even though the rest of the house is really nice. First impressions matter, so it would be better to wallpaper, even though people don't like wallpaper.

I hadn't heard of Peel Stop, so I'll mention that to my painter. I was hoping there would be some really thick paint that would fill in the imperfections in the walls so I wouldn't need to cover it all with wallpaper! The walls were obviously never primed before someone painted, but the paint is really thin. I could steam it off, but that will take forever, and I have to get this house on the market soon!!

I was hoping for an easier solution, so I'd welcome any more suggestions.

Maybe a distressed finish, or are those too dated now?? A friend has a sponge-painted ceiling to hide a bunch of cracks in her plaster, and that worked! TIA!

Put a couple coats of Gardz on and re paper( get something nice). If the perspective buyers don't like it, they can deal with it. At least the walls will be somewhat ready .
Do NOT, repeat, do not try and hide it with a faux finish, this just makes it worse.

I understand the point your real estate agent is making, but sometimes doing the best thing is not possible.

You might want to consider posting on the Buying and Selling Houses forum and ask if they have any suggestions.

Could you get people to enter the house another way so this isn't the first thing they see?

What ever you do - don't put some cheap bandaid solution on the walls and make more work for the next owner.

There's going to be dust, dirt, fumes. The Gardz advice is good advice. Gardz has fumes, skim coating will create dust from the sanding. This is the proper way to fix the situation that you created.

I don't know what your situation is but you say: you can't move your child out of the house for a couple of days? You can't spend a lot of money...

Maybe you should just stay put.

Staying put is not a solution, but I agree that a cheap bandaid is not a good idea. That's why postponing completion of the work until after the house is sold should be considered.

I just found a product called Peel Stop triple thick primer -- has anyone used this product? I'm thinking it might solve the problem!

My painter painted over a small area of the hall with regular zero voc primer and two coats of Harmony paint (applied with a roller), and you really can't see the outlines of the peeled paint at all unless you look really closely.

I'm thinking Peel Stop triple thick primer might both seal down the paint and level out the surface (it's a very thin coat of paint that's peeling revealing areas of smooth plaster). Would the Peel Stop flatten out the surface enough that my painter could roll on a coat or two of paint that would hide the problem?

Any thoughts? Thanks

If he actually is a painter, ask him.
To me, that would not be an option, but that's me.

Christoph, you would not use Peel Stop?

Peel Stop is recommended by Zinsser, "Gardz on steroids" for peeling paint. He said it is a glue.

With the wall paper residue, you will need Gardz so it doesn't reactivate by painting. Peel Stop does not do that. I was told I could do Gardz over Peel Stop. Now, he claimed that Gardz was not made for flaking paint (the issue here, and you can chip and peel it off) but the can seems to indicate otherwise and people here use it for that purpose. Got me there!

I am not using triple thick but it does sound appealing. The other two are so watery ... very easy splattering! You have to go slow.

If not in the documentation, I would check with tech support at Zinsser to be sure if the Peel Stop can go over glue residue.

This post was edited by snookums2 on Sun, Apr 14, 13 at 12:39

No, I would not use it. It is not meant for sealing down wall paper paste, Gardz is. It is just me, but I would fix it the right way.

I'm following up in case anyone has a similar problem.

Here's what we did:

First, DH scraped all the loose paint off by hand and I followed him with a shop vac with a hepa filter, so it wasn't too messy or dusty.

Second, we used vinegar and hot water and a scrubby sponge to scrub as much wallpaper paste (and more loose paint flakes as well as wallpaper backing still stuck to the wall) as we could get off the walls. We ended up with a lot of patches of paint sticking to smooth, bare plaster. It looked pretty bad!

Third, my painter painted the entire area (450 square feet) with Zinsser Triple Thick Bonding Primer. It's very thick, like pudding. He thinned it a tiny bit with water and rolled it on with a 1/2" nap roller. The walls looked better just with the primer!

Fourth, my painter painted a second coat of the same primer in areas he thought were a little rough looking and it really smoothed those areas out.

Fifth, my painter applied two coats of Behr Premium Plus Ceiling Paint tinted to our wall color. It's very, very flat and reflects almost nothing.

VOILA! It worked! The walls are smooth-looking. If you examine the walls closely, you can make out the outlines of some of the paint patches sticking to the wall under all that primer and paint, but the combination of the primer and flat, flat ceiling paint really hid it! Yea! No fumes either!!

The paint did bubble up in places at first, but after 24 hours it shrunk down completely flat! I don't know if it will hold forever, but it looks great now. It was the simplest solution, and it didn't make anyone sick, so I'm very happy.

No, it wasn't "a very bad decision." I have bought and looked at buying a number of houses over the years, and hiding imperfections on hallway walls doesn't come close to that characterization.

If the future owners decide they want a smoother finish, they can skim coat, sand and paint. It's not a big deal to have that done, just something the OP couldn't do given her son's health.

Applying Behr CEILING paint on the walls is a big problem in my book. Ceiling paints a not formulated for use where there will be traffic. It will never be able to be cleaned. I don't think the childs health was much of an issue with the 2 products that were used anyway. The Zinnser primer was hardly voc free, let alone the Behr paint.

So the new owner comes in and paints over it. No big deal, she has done no permanent or impending damage to the house. If she had done something irregular with the electrical or plumbing or something structural, that would be a different matter and possibly fall into the big problem category.

what ever

I will answer this one in 2 parts.

1) If you have plaster walls, then your home was most likely built prior to 1978. It depends on the area, I suppose, but the majority of homes built Pre-1978 have dangerous amounts of lead in the paint.

Because of this, I highly recommend either getting a lead test before DIY-ing it, or hiring a professional company that's certified to do lead abatement and lead maintenance repainting.

If you scrape/sand/etc over lead paint with children in the house, then unfortunately, asthma and allergies will be the least of your worries. Lead has been shown to cause severe birth defects in fetuses of pregnant women, as well as learning deficits, lowered IQ, organ damage, ADHD, and other serious problems in children. It also affects adults, although to a lesser extent. Lead dust/chips, when inhaled or swallowed, stays in the bone marrow for decades and slowly releases into the bloodstream, where it damages organs including the brain, liver, heart, etc.

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2) If by plaster you really meant to say "drywall", then unfortunately, the only way to hide this defect is by applying joint compound, sanding, oil priming and painting.

If your son has asthma, a way to counter this is, ironically, doing the same thing a lead abatement company would do: Quarantine the area off with plastic and painters tape (they use duct tape and 6mm plastic for lead, but you dont need all that), turn off the AC/Heat and plastic the vents and return system, and completely box in the area sealed tight. Then, once he is done, have him do the "TSP sandwich"- clean the dust up with TSP mixed with water (8 parts water, 1 part TSP), then have him use a HEPA vacuum to vacuum all of the area, then wet-wipe again with the TSP/water combo. At this point, have the area air scrubbed with a HEPA filter (air scrubber preferably, but a lower strength one will do), then remove the plastic and immediately bag it. Problem solved.

ALSO, one more thing:Even if a self-leveling paint could cover this ridge(which it wont, self leveling doesnt work over obvious ridges like that), then you would still need to clean the walls with TSP and water and then apply an oil primer before doing the self-leveling paint, in order to clean and then prime over any remnants of, the wallpaper glue. If you just put the paint over the ridge as it currently is, it would probably start to peel due to the wallpaper glue or glue remnants.