Please help - do I need to remove old textured wallpaper or can we plaster over it?

[Cristiane]

Hi, am really hoping someone can help me with this. We have bought a house with disgusting textured wallpaper, some of walls have chip stuff, others just weird patterns.
One plasterer has said that you can coat the old wallpaper with PVA/ Bluesomething?? and then skim plaster over the top.
Other plasterer refuses to do that and says that it might mean that water could get behind paper and cause bubbles and that the plaster finish would not be good.
Taking off the wallpaper is an enormous job, so obviously keen to avoid it if we can, but clearly i don't want to have a rubbish result.
Anyone got any experience?

Take it off, its probably in poor quality and it will make the walls looks crap, if not now but later. And it would be really hard to replaster.

We had a house like this and TBH the textured stuff was the easiest stuff to get off as it was really stiff. We found we could rip it off manually. But I'd also advise investing in a steamer.

You have to bite the bullet but I feel your pain - we had wallpaper with crocodiles on it and some that looked like brains....

The textured stuff should come off fairly easily, if you score and steam it. The chip stuff though, you might want to get this polycell smoothover it is expensive, but well worth it in my experience

the second plasterer is right, I'm afraid. Plastering over old wallpaper is a piss-poor idea, as the new plaster will only be as strong as the old wallpaper and the crumbly wall it's undoubtedly hiding.

You can steam it off with a cheapo steamer, or you can do what decorators do and soak it with a big wet sponge and dilute wallpaper paste, and then scrape it off with broad-bladed scrapers once it's all good and soggy.

It is hideous to do, and the condition of the wall underneath may well make you weep, but it's a false economy to pay a plasterer to skim over a load of cruddy wall.

I'd remove it - some of the damp from the wet plaster is bound to penetrate the wallpaper making it peel and bring your new plasterwork off with it. Definitely get a steamer.

Thanks... Mercedes the crocodiles sound classy

Imnotaslimjim there seem to be very varied reviews on the Polycell stuff have you tried it?

Take it off -- we had to do this in our whole house. It's a bit messy sometimes but not hard. What you find underneath will be horrid, but the pleasure of bundling all the disgusting wallpaper into a bin bag is a compensation and a good plaster skim is a thing of beauty.

Many thanks for these tips. How long do you think to take the paper off an average room?

oooh one more question... do you have to remove cornicing and skirting ahead of plastering?

No, assuming that the walls are being skimmed rather than full plaster, the skirting, architrave etc can stay on.

You could actually be quite pleasantly surprised, you know. I've been removing wallpaper from our new house and TBH most of the walls are pretty good underneath. Only 1 room has that dreaded chipboard wallpaper, and that is taking a long time to remove, about 3 - 4 times as long as normal wallpaper.

Leave the skirting and architrave, unless you are intending on changing them, then yes, take them off before the plastering.

I'd very seriously consider keeping the woodchip wallpaper - or, at the very least, leave it till all the other rooms are done.

This is bitter experience talking. Yes, we now have beautiful smooth walls downstairs, but the amount of time / cost was horrific. Not just removing the woodchip, but then making good the shoddy plaster they were hiding. Awful.

Grendels Mum - was it the taking off of the woodchip that caused the damage to the walls? Did you need to replace the plasterboard?

I think that the quality of the board behind is good, because the house has not been redecorated for about fifty years, and the one wall we have taken down shows very good board and T&G wood behind it.

We have done both ways.

First room we did was plastered over the wall paper as we had time constraint.
The rest were properly stripped and replastered.

To date there is no visible difference.

Sunshine! How did you plaster over it? How long ago?

Admittedly not long ago, a few months and our builder was reluctant to do it although he admitted afterwards that he did it this way in his own house!

He used a few coats of pva to seal and then plastered over it.

Thank you