"Have you ever even used either product??? That statement is just ludicrous. " Gardz was formulated to seal torn drywall, Kilz will not even come close to the performance of Gardz, not even on the same planet, get real." I have tried both of them. "Formulated" is in the eye of the manufacturer and the advertising department. I could care less about what the sales garbage says. "Latex Kilz product are highly marketed, over rated primers. If you were a professional painter and did this for a living you would know this. " I actually prefer shellac to avoid adding ANY water to the damaged surface, guess you missed that. The only reason to put anything on damaged drywall before repairing the surface is to reduce the movement of water from joint compound into the damaged cardboard causing any further swelling. Setting compound does a lot better than premix. You can use only as much water as you need to get a mix for skimming. Failing to remove left over paste before finishing is just foolish, and is not the issue here. Any coating is not being used as a primer to improve adhesion of the paint, just to block some moisture. Just about any primer will work for this, and it is going to get buried under a layer of drywall mud when the area is skimmed. Anyone who knows how to reportage damaged drywall and skim coat would know this. The painters do NOT know (ever watched them try to fix plaster?). They paint things, not install and repair walls.

Thanks for the reassurance -- all is well. The wall where the wallpaper removal had taken off the drywall has been skim coated ( not sanded yet) but looks so much better. I understand now what the workers are up against -- some of the walls have a reasonable amount of primer -- others are just barely primed -- very thin coat of primer in center section of wall only. I also saw the can of Gardz and learned from this forum that they were priming the damaged dry wall with it. ( more reassurance) The work has been going on for a week now the the wallpaper is almost gone. I am sure this turned into a much larger job then they expected. The worker I spoke with said that most wallpaper that he has stripped was added onto at least previously painted walls -- not onto barely primed new drywall. I am now wondering if I want to tackle my upstairs -- every room in this home was wallpapered when we bought it.

Most of the info you find online is from folks who are stripping modern wallpaper off of sheetrock, and stripping very old wallpaper off of plaster may take a different technique. Sheetrock has a paper layer on top, and if its painted before paper is applied, the wallpaper does not stick that tightly. However, wallpaper that has been applied to raw plaster really sticks to it. I tried perforating the paper withe paper tiger and spraying the wall with remover, but in most areas it didn't really break the old paper loose and I just got small strips to come off. Then I used a steamer and stripped off the larger pieces of wallpaper. Mine appeared to be patterned wallpaper on top of a white wallpaper-like finish that had been applied when the plaster was new. I first stripped off whatever I could using the steamer and paper tiger, but there was still a lot of small sections left on the wall. I then used the steamer and a razor blade (in a holder) held at a very slight angle to strip off all the remains. I am right handed, so I held the steamer on one section with my left hand while I scraped paper off with my right hand and continued to work from right to left. This was a slow process, but I did get it all off. I then hired a guy to strip my living room wall and his technique was different. He steamed it much more and was able to get both layers of paper to break loose fairly quickly. However, he used so much steam that the water dripped down between the baseboard and wall, and onto the concrete walls in the basement below, and he had to paint those walls to cover the streaks after he was done. My technique was slower, but his was much messier because of all the hot steam. Bruce

Thank you! BTW: Do you do this, too? I found it on the arch in my doorway. I think it's the tradesman who did the remodel in '37, because we know who the owner was, and his name wasn't Frederick . I coated it with Gardz to preserve it before I hang up some Anaglypta.