painting over wallpaper...UPDATE

****Update*****
so after all this contemplation and waste of 3 weeks, time, frustration and paint we have decide to re-sheetrock all the walls in the house, with the exception of the kitchen and 1 bedroom. i'm afraid to tell my mom b/c that is what she wants us to do in the beginning and she has been more frustrated then me through the past 3 weeks. so she is going to flip! oh well, at least it's going to finally get done the right way. thanks for all the advice and suggestions! i hope it doesn't take another 3 weeks to finish this and get in! i already made the first mortgage payment and we don't live there!



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so long story short...after trying unsuccessfully to take layers of wallpaper and paint off of EVERY room in our new house, we decided to spackle over the seams, sand them down and paint over. i went over tonight to see what my FIL had done and the paint looks great, but in certain light you can see all the spackled seams around the room!! i'm really upset and freaking out because of course i don't like the way this looks and we are planning on doing this in every room!!

has anyone had experience with this? i'm hoping that maybe another layer of paint will help cover it more, but if we put another coat on and it doesn't work what is our next step? i don't want every room to look like this and we've already been dealing with wallpaper and paint issues for 3 weeks and we're not even in the house yet! should i be resheetrocking my whole house? i just want to be in my house! TIA

Message edited 9/21/2010 2:32:08 PM.

Re: painting over wallpaper...

I did it at my old house (which we rented from my dad)

Someone had already painted over the wallpaper and the seams started to open up over time. We spackled over it before we repainted and let me tell you what a disaster! Looked horrible, you could still see the seams, so not only was it seams but lumpy seams at that. It also started chipping and peeling away over time. Sorry I am no help!!

Re: painting over wallpaper...

did you try using DIF to take the wall paper off? we had some in our kitchen that was as thin as looseleaf paper and DIF was the only thing that took it off; it did take several coats of the DIF to come off, but it worked eventually. I was desperate not to paint over the wall paper precisely b/c of what you are describing.

hope you can work it out to your satisfaction!

Re: painting over wallpaper...

we tried DIF in the living room. i know we were inpatient and didn't let it soak in enough because we could NOT get the wallpaper off. we destroyed 2 of those walls doing thaqt, so we are resheetrocking in the living room. we were able to get all the wallpaper off in the kitchen, so that won't be a problem. but to save more time and money, we decided to just spackle seams and paint over in 2 of the bedrooms and the hallway. (we were lucky that 1 room didn't have wallpaper.)

my FIL originally told us he was just going to paint 1 wall to see how it works. he might not have been able to see anything in the day light, but when i turned on a light at night i could see every seam. i wanted to cry because another part of the story is that my mom offered to pay for our house to be painted, but FIL and DH insisted we let his father do it. so here are 3 weeks later with only now 2 rooms painted and i'm not even happy with it!

i don't want to spend more time on this, but i want it done right and no one is listening to me!! sorry for the vent!

Re: painting over wallpaper...

I would stop while you are ahead and not do that anymore. You will never have nice walls if you do that, paint will not be smooth. Painting over it is just creating a larger mess that you will need to address at some point in time.

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Re: painting over wallpaper...

Try http://www.simplestrip.com/. I have never used it but have seen it used.

Someone painted over my wallpaper and you can see the seems.

Re: painting over wallpaper...

Stop your ILs!!!! I agree you need to put the kibosh on the painting over the paper. If you can see it already and if you are like me, your eye will go right to it when you sit in the room. There are many products out there, probably some that are a lot more work than others but I'd rather put the work in than have it looks cruddy. Even if it was a slow process it would be better to have walls "under construction" than half azzed. My DH would probably be fine with it though so it depends on the person I guess.

Re: painting over wallpaper...

Get a steamer. My parents have one for wall paper removal. The stuff peels right off but it is time consuming.