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Home Repair The Old House DIY

Wallpaper install problems!

2 months ago

Hi! I am having such a hard time with my walls in my dining room. They are old plaster walls. I had put up wallpaper 3 years ago and the wallpaper actually pulled so hard from the seams that it ripped open and brought a bunch of layers of old paint with it to expose old lead / oil paint. (I had not primed the walls beforehand) I have removed all the wallpaper from 3 years ago, patched the walls. I primed them x 3 with a wallpaper primer and I have made my way 1/4 around the room with the new paper so far. I am noticing if I do not wipe the residual glue off the primed walls in between sessions of wallpapering then it actually crackles the wallpaper primer right off my wall! I am terrified that means the seams of the walls I have already done will open back up again! I am also already noticing some slippage / separation at the seams once the wallpaper has totally dried to the wall. Do you have any advice for me? I am pulling my hair out! I have already started this project again! Thanks so much !!!

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Comments (4)

cat_ky
2 months ago
Did you get all the glue off the walls from the first wallpaper job? You may have had a lot better adhesion for the wallpaper, if you had primed with gardz. https://www.rustoleum.com/product-catalog/consumer-brands/zinsser-products/specialty-water-base-primers/gardz-problem-surface-sealer
Julie Pacini
Original Author
2 months ago
Oh man. I used Kilz because the wall had exposed lead paint. Then wallpaper primer - Roman 977. But it sounds like this would have been better. i have three coats of wallpaper primer on the walls right now. Should I continue or go back and use a layer of gardz?
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"brickeyee" I appreciate your input about using drywall instead of floor boards. I've wrestled with that idea for a few days now. Here's my problem. The plaster walls are really old with a lot of bows and bulges, I thought the wood product would be stiffer and maybe give me a smoother finish than drywall. I thought the drywall might telegraph the imperfections of the wall. Plus, i have never taped and mudded before and when I mess that up it might look worse then the seams of the wood product. I don't know ? Additionally, I'm doing V-board at the bottom and the top 4 ft. to the ceiling with wood panels. I hope it does not turn into a disaster.
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Primer. I don't know a name brand to recommend, but the answer is definitely primer. When we moved into our house 20 years ago, I wanted to remove the paper from two bathrooms. Here's how it went: I started in the master bath, and it was SO EASY. Literally, 15 minutes later the walls were bare. The stuff pulled off in huge sheets, and the bits that didn't come off were easy to pull. I was so confident! Why do people whine about this chore? Then I moved on to the hall bath (unfortunately, the larger bath). Hours later I had removed maybe 10% of the wallpaper, and I was in a foul mood. I did some reading, and the next day -- and the next and the next and the next -- I tried hot water, chemicals, a special scraper. It was a miserable job. When the wallpaper people came to install the new stuff, I asked them WHY the two bathrooms had been so different, and they explained primer to me. By the way, I love the fish.
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cat_ky
2 months ago
I guess, see how the paper is in a day or two. But, yes, if you have a problem, definitely go back and use gardz.
kathyg_in_mi
2 months ago
Wallpaper stretches, did you stretch it too far and when it dried seams opened up? i did that years ago.

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