I dread peeling 28-year-old wallpaper. I just can't imagine the old sheetrock will be smooth enough to paint. But, I'm afraid new 1/4" sheetrock will mess up the baseboard and door trim connections. Has anyone done this? How did you handle the trim?

I faced the same problem in a 90 year old house. The trimwork was too intricate for me to want to mess with it, so I bit the bullet and smoothed out the walls. I did use 1/4" sheetrock above the crown molding and ceiling though and it all turned out fine.

Have you tried steaming and/or using a wallpaper stripper compound? The Zinsser stripper I used worked really well.

You either trim the trim ( small quarter round might not look so bad, try it up against what is there ) doesn't look too pretty with inexpensive ranch casings [ to my eye] but anything else might fly )
or
remove it and shim it to the new height.

I'd pay somebody to come in and repair the wall paper removal mess with a nice skim coat before I started messing with trim unless that trim is cheap crap to begin with.
I've done skim coat myself but you wouldn't want to pay me by the hour. ( and the skim coating I've done is proof it takes a bit of practice and patience to come out really nice) maybe when you do your own you are to0 familiar with the known flaws and they stand out mostly because you know where they are.

---

Kooper's Flute Thing cover

[www.freethegrapes.org]

norwegian wood reality TV

[www.youtube.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/2012 04:39PM by billb.

there must be an easier way to do this.

---

What kind of baseboards and door trim ? A photo would help. There are different techniques
depending on what you have to work with and tools available.

Are you dealing with 3/4" thick trim or ranch casing, colonial trim, or ??

---

Quote
mattkime
there must be an easier way to do this.

I have been told (by a builder) that in some cases, you can paint over wallpaper.

---

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. — Oscar Wilde

Quote
mattkime
there must be an easier way to do this.

Yeah..........



Move........

Didn't know they made quarter-inch sheetrock. Must be light to carry, easy to break and hard to dimple.

-mj

Quote
Dennis S
I dread peeling 28-year-old wallpaper. I just can't imagine the old sheetrock will be smooth enough to paint. But, I'm afraid new 1/4" sheetrock will mess up the baseboard and door trim connections. Has anyone done this? How did you handle the trim?

Standard forum rehabbing advice: Gut the entire building down to the studs, and replace any of those that aren't in pristine condition. You'll be sorry you didn't!

---

MR/F Guestmap: [www.mapservices.org]

What billb said. Putting up sheetrock will cause more problems than it solves. You'll not only have to futz with the trim, you'll have to tape and texture. I would just get some wallpaper removal tools (remover, steamer, etc), get it off as best as you can, then hire an expert to do a skim coat. It'll look vastly better than any other solution.

Although wallpaper removal can be difficult, I pulled some wallpaper off in my own house and it was really easy.

---

"So be proud to be a decent American instead of just a w'anker whipping up fear!" - Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/2012 07:14PM by davester.

After further review, I think I'll peel the wallpaper and see how it looks. It might not be so bad.

Since you decided to peel the wallpaper, you saved yourself a lot of work. Been there, done that.

Just finished pulling down wallpaper, actually string cloth stuff, from my dinig room. It had been up about 25 years, and it was put up over unprimed Sheetrock. I took my time, was careful, and it came off well enough that I only had a little bit of spackleing to do, then I primed and painted.

I was able to get the top layer off easily, then I had to spray the backing, with just water, that was still stuck to the unprimed Sheetrock and then scrape, gently, with a single edged razor blade. They make a tool with a blade in it for scraping, but you need to just be very careful, whatever you use, not to gouge holes in the Sheetrock.

Take your time, and it should come off. You will most like spend less time taking it down, than you would covering it up. Good luck. It is a sucky job, but someone has to do it.

---

Alpharetta, GA (Atlanta suburb)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2012 09:34AM by rgG.

Quote
MacJeepster
Didn't know they made quarter-inch sheetrock. Must be light to carry, easy to break and hard to dimple.

-mj

---

Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

My mom took down a lot of wallpaper. She had a thing that you ran over the wallpaper to put small holes in it. Then an enzyme based glue dissolver that you put on the wallpaper. The wallpaper came down quite easy.