I agree completely. They were not professionals and they had zero respect for our home. In addition to doing a thoroughly crappy job, they used a BOX KNIFE to trim off sections of the protective floor coverings that were put down to save our 60 year old hardwood floors and sliced the floors around the perimeter of most rooms. My blood is boiling just typing this!! All of this happened before Christmas and I still haven't calmed down enough to allow the contractor back in the house (except to have him over immediately after we discovered everything so we could convey just how unhappy we were). I'm not letting the same paint crew back in my house. We're dealing with a contractor who has several crews and why we were given these guys, I have no idea. Thanks for the confirmation that Aura is a good choice.

Yea, it's true that a sander almost means you can skip the scraping, though sometimes the sander can't get under the flaking paint to remove big chunks of it. Also, I don't really like using a 5 in 1 tool for anything because the blade is too thick. I prefer a thin putty knife.

I had to have it done years ago at a rental property...a prior owner had built an addition and then as it was settling cracks started to spread all over the floor in that one large room. The tile person removed it all with a jackhammer and replaced with new tile, and took some precautions so the cracks didn't start again. I don't remember any damage to the drywall, and I would have noticed because I painted the room after it was done.

That's not the way renting works. When you own your home, you can redecorate, repaint, reconfigure, and renovate to your heart's (and wallet's!) content. As a renting tenant, you have certain legal rights, including rights to peaceful enjoyment of a healthful environment. However, I don't know of any city where a tenant's legal rights include decor which matches the tenant's furniture. I'm a landlord. I'm pretty easy to get along with, but if that were my house and you were my prospective tenant, I'd respectfully and politely suggest that you should look for a different place to live. I'm amending this to say that I didn't mean that to sound quite as callous as it does now that I reread it. I might tend to such reactions because I've had tenants do truly amazing things to my rentals. One drilled a hole through the wall between the garage and the kitchen, and spliced his welder into the electric range receptacle. Another Sharpie-scrawled a bizarre message to a former boyfriend or girlfriend on a wall. I could go on for pages. So can every other landlord, I'm sure. You can't make this stuff up. So I think it's good that you're asking whether your idea might cause permanent damage (which there's a pretty solid chance that it will). How about this. Maybe you can find a nice folding screen at Ikea or one of the import stores, and set that up in front of the fireplace. You could even commission an artistic friend to paint an attractive scene on the screen, in colors that work with your furniture.