Help! Urgent wall preparation advice needed!

[BumpPlus2]

Hi,

My DH is currently preparing a bedroom for painting and we have a problem which we need a solution to!

Our house is about 7 years old (we have lived here for 2) and it has become apparent that the plasterboard walls have never been sealed. The owners/builders appear to have put (a) coat/s of paint on top of bare plaster and so whenever the walls are banged, scraped, blu tack or nails are removed huge amounts of paint also flake away.

Now he is sanding (manually and electric) the walls - huge amounts of paint are coming off down to the plaster. Our worry is that even if he tries to 'prime' the walls it will only 'take' on the bits which are down to the bare plaster and the bits with paint remaining will just suffer the same problem when new paint is applied as it will still be painting on top of paint, painted onto unprimed walls!

I hope that this is clear - it's a bit hard to explain without you seeing it - and hope someone can offer a solution which isn't too costly - ie re plaster the walls!!

Thanks

you can get special paint for flaky walls - Polycell do some. It's pricy (about £35 for a big square tub) but it worked on our Victorian distemper which was like mashed up chalk applied to the walls and showered off when you brushed it!

Ooo thanks so much for this - will Google it now! How did you prep first tyv?

we didn't prep it really - just scraped off the obviously shedding bits of distemper and then rollered on the polycell. It was this stuff - 3 in 1 basecoat but google has informed me that they also do one called Polycell 3-in-1 primer. I am not exactly sure what the difference is - maybe go to a trade-type shop and ask what they recommend?

One word of warning with the basecoat - it's really thick and gloopy and on particularly flaky parts we found that the distemper was pulled off the wall by the roller and stuck to the paint on the roller, which then transferred the bits of distemper all over the rest of the wall. Our solution was to hand paint these bits using a brush, which didn't give quite as even a finish, but was better than great clumps of distemper everywhere.

It's only available in white so you have to paint over it - but this is quite good as it helps even out the imperfections a bit more.

Thanks for your advice. I had found the primer one when Googling so will show both to DH so he can figure out which is best but definitely seems one or other will do the job! Such a pain as our whole house is going to require it but at least it is fixable