question for the painters/plasterers/drywall guys

[Neal Clayton]

restoring the old plaster in a 100 year old house here. kinda working room by room doing other projects as i go.

problem: the original walls had wallpaper, not painted. the original wallpaper was painted over, most needs to be reskimmed. i've meticulously removed wallpaper and paste residue to this point, but am wondering if there's an easier way, especially when it gets down to just the lower bit of the paper and the glue residue.

seems from searching around that alot of pros recommend zinnser guardz primer or shellac primer over the wallpaper stripped walls. is this viable? how clean must the walls really be?

[Jay Jolliffe]

I painted & wallpapered houses for 20yrs......If you plan to paint the walls instead of re wallpapering you have to get all the paste off. If you don't after awhile the paint that was put on over any paste will start to crack & flake off. I used warm water & maybe a little dish soap, not much just a few drops. If the old plaster is really porous it's hard to get it all out without having the plaster suck up the water. There maybe new products out now that will cover the paste residue. I stopped doing that work 15 yrs ago. I learned on one job that if you don't get all the paste boy are you in for probelms. Patches of cracking paint everywhere & it's a pain in the a** to fix after the fact.....

[Jason Roehl]

Gardz isn't for plaster--it's for priming drywall paper that has delaminated before patching it.

If you're talking about smooth plaster, I usually use a 4" razor scraper to get what wallpaper I can off dry, then I bring out the paper tigers and DIF solution to work wet. Once all the paper is off, use the DIF solution to wipe down the walls. Patch, prime and paint.

[Dan Hintz]

Listen to Jay... our house's previous owner had wallpapered the entire bathroom, ceiling included. My wife and her ex stripped the wallpaper, but they didn't take care of the paste. At some point I will be forced to sand the entire shebang because there are large areas all over the place where the paint is cracking/peeling.

[Neal Clayton]

paint adhesion isn't the issue, the walls will all be replastered so plaster bonding is the primary concern.

[Chris Struttman]

I have found WP Chomp to be much better than DIF. It usually works better at getting the glue off without having to soak the entire wall.

You can Google it and find it at Sears and Ace.