He obviously doesn't know how to skim coat and fix the drywall which makes me wonder what his painting abilities would be - cut your losses and find someone qualified. There's NO reason to apply a second layer of drywall - that's just asking for trouble. Picture how that will look with your existing trim - is he going to remove all the trim and re fit it over the new layer of drywall - I think not. Move on.

I agree with dlm. I had the wallpaper removing project from h**l, but I finally got to a smooth wall surface and was able to paint. Yes, move on, and good luck.

I still haven't skimmed the entire wall (possible lead-based gloss paint so I don't want to sand it), but my mom had mirrored tiles in her hallway and tore the paper off the drywall getting them off. I primed the bare spots with either 1-2-3 or BIN (forget what she picked up) so the water in the joint compound wouldn't soak the paper, and then skimmed the patches. You might or might not have to skim the whole wall if he left a lot of bare spots like she did.

I agree with the others. The drywall can be fixed, no need to replace or add another layer. Another layer of drywall will throw off your baseboards and every electrical plate you have on the wall.

Thanks for all the responses! I guess me and my husband will try and fix the wall - the "handyman" is obviously not up to to it.

Same as ajsmama, I had a wide section of mirror tiles removed from a plasterboard wall, leaving huge chunks missing. A retired sheet-metal-worker friend (read: not even a professional, just a dabbler) skim-coated it in about 3-4 sessions until it was as smooth as glass. It's the most perfect surface in the house! It CAN be done; seems like this guy just doesn't want to take the time.

We removed grasscloth from the 70's and it destroyed the walls. We put 1/4" drywall on top and we were finished in no time.

my MIL is going through this at her house - in that she removed wallpaper that was apparently held on with superglue ;-) and it left those cardboard-like patches all over the room. But she is having it skim-coated. Skim coat the spots - even if you don't get it perfect, use drywall sand paper to smooth it out.

I screwed up DW walls in my last house in my first amateur attempt to strip wallpaper in that place. The ex-H was adamant we fix with DW on top.

I skimmed the damage, lots of smoothing, and it turned out fantastic. If he just exposed cardboard or even pulled out the gypsum in spots along with the cardboard...that's not even a big deal to fix. Gouges and holes are easy.

The key thing is to prime the ripped areas with a shellac-based primer before patching, or else the exposed paper will bubble (ask me how I know!). After the primer is dry, skim the ripped areas. Let that dry (may want a couple of coats of mud if paper is all feathery as 2-3 thin coats are better than 1 thick coat, don't sand between coats), then skim the whole wall if it's not too big (like one wall, not the whole room), if you're careful you can just take a damp sponge and wipe down the high spots on the final coat, or a sanding block with 220 grit sandpaper, just to smooth it out, don't want to sand through the top coat. And don't sand out the patches before you skim the entire wall or you'll see them - let the final skim coat blend in the edges. Then prime and paint the whole wall.

Of course, if the rips are on every wall in the room, you may not want to skim all the walls so you'll have to feather the patches. Hopefully they're concentrated in just a few areas so you can spot-prime and patch the rips, then skim the entire area(s) and just sponge of sand the edges. Guaranteed if you try to patch and feather, sand each 1x4 (or so) rip, you'll end up sanding through your patch and/or scuffing the undamaged wall around the edges so much that each spot will be visible. Again, if you've just patched (large) spots, best to prime the whole wall (may want to prime the new mud first, then after it's dry recoat the entire wall, depends on what paint you're using) before you paint. HTH

The key thing is to prime the ripped areas with a shellac-based primer before patching, or else the exposed paper will bubble (ask me how I know!).

I agree - prime the ripped areas before patching. I don't know what a shellac-based primer is - I used an oil based primer. The object is to have a non-water based primer between the damaged drywall and the drywall mud that repairs it.

How about using Gardz instead of an oil-based primer? There is a thread here
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/decor/msg0610232117036.html

on repairing drywall and that what some recommend.

We did a little bit of both in our house. We had a very experienced drywall guy working in our house after we removed wallpaper in every room on the main level. The walls were in horrendous shape underneath. In all but one room he skim coated and then we primed and painted. In one bedroom, though, the wallpaper was literally coming off in slivers. In that room, which had paneling on the bottom half and wallpaper on the top, we removed the paneling and then added 1/4" drywall on top. There were no baseboards in that room and we are replacing the doors anyway, so removing the trim was no big deal. You do have to deal with making the plugs and switches flush with the new drywall, though, and trimming your windows.

As for prepping the walls that have ripped drywall, I recommend Gardz. We had several walls that were papered over unprimed drywall and when we removed the wallpaper it destroyed the drywall:

Gardz sealed the areas so that no moisture from the mud and paint could seep in and cause it to bubble. After the Gardz, he skim coated and we primed and painted. It looks great.