Wallpaper under wall texture

10 years ago

We are buying a 1906 foursquare and at some point in the early 1980s, the previous owners covered over all the wallpaper on the ground floor (probably more than one layer) with knockdown texture. We would really, really like to remove this, as we loathe the texture.

I'm familiar with the process of scoring/spraying or steaming regular wallpaper, but I have no idea how to go about removing something that has a skim coat on it. Any suggestions?

Featured Answer

User

10 years ago

Before you start with the scoring and steaming, see if you can slide a thin scraper blade under the texture. make one slice through the texture and then weasel the blade under it.

Sometime you get lucky and it comes off in big flakes because the texture weakened the paper. Then you just have wallpaper, not paper and sodden texture.

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Comments (7)

klem1
10 years ago
"I'm familiar with the process of scoring/spraying or steaming regular wallpaper"

Then you are familiar with the fact some paper soak's through with water and doesn't need scoring. "IF" that's the case with this paper "AND" the texture redily absorb's water,repeated spraying with a garden sprayer might alow scraping off at once. If texture resist's water it will require alot of scraping and a big vac getting down to the paper. There might be scoring tools with longer spikes than a Paper Tiger that will score through texture but still sound's like alot of dust would result.
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User
10 years ago
If it is drywall mud, the water will most likely allow you to scrape it off. If it is plaster you can sand it down and/OR put on a skim coat of drywall mud.
Ednamaee
10 years ago
You have to consider the possibility that the wallpaper is stuck like crazy...how do you know there is wallpaper underneath? Drywall mud is wet amd takes a while to dry so would soak the paper off if the paper was easily removable...unless it was sealed with a good, probably oil base primer. Skim coat over the knock down and start from there...just an option not yet suggested. Scraping and sanding painted drywall mud is not easy. Paint protects it. Skim coating is easier. Imo.
bibliophibian
Original Author
10 years ago
Well, I'm not sure there's wallpaper underneath, but I can see vertical lines under the wall texture, which is suggestive. But after I asked my initial question, the prior owner told us that he had the walls retextured without incident at some point, which makes me more optimistic that maybe we can skim coat it.

The one thing that worries me is that we had some cracked plaster repaired in one 2nd floor room, which did not have anything on the walls but did have a textured ceiling that we had skim coated. About 30 minutes after the skim coat went up, huge chunks started coming down as the skim coat soaked through the ceiling wallpaper that we didn't know was under there. I'd really prefer not to have that happen again.
User
10 years ago
Maybe it's liner paper on your walls and not wallpaper. It might be that the plaster wasn't nice so they lined the walls.
powermuffin
10 years ago
I would try to soak one inconspicuous area and see what is underneath. I had 7 layers of wallpaper, then texture, then paneling, then more wall paper. Once I got the paneling off, I soaked the walls and everything else came off pretty easily.