Help- fully tiled walls in kitchen

[Michellexxx]

Looking for some help here.

We are in a house we are hoping to completely renovate but the costs at the moment are too obscene for us to contemplate.

We have decorated all easy areas- new paint etc. however, the kitchen/dining is tricky. For some reason, the previous owner decided to tile the entire wall around the dining area. Although one side has diagonal bead board on in in cream, so actually looks ok. However the other side is huge pinkish tiles at the bottom, a border tile in middle and house cream/beige tiles on top with some random patterns on some.

The only solution I can come up with is to stick wall sized panels on top. My husband is being quite difficult though and saying he doesn’t want that anymore (claiming he likes the tiles) He has never liked the tiles and is basically being a bit childish.

Anyway, he said we’d have to find a compromise but I literally can’t think of what else we could do. If we rip the tiles off then I think we’d have to get a plasterer in, which would end up costing much more.

Can you stick plasterboard on tiles and paint?! Or does anyone have any other ideas? Thanks

Why can't you just paint the tiles?

Even if you dry lined you'd need a plasterer. We had an entire facing brick wall in our dining room, hideous and dusty.
We saved up for a plasterer.

Because it would still be a fully tiled wall. Just a painted one.

So can you not paint onto drywall? The full wall panelling really seems like the best solution, and cheapest. But he’s being a pain!

Have you got a photo?

No, you can't really paint on drywall without plastering. It gets taped together at the front with ductape, and then plastered on top. I would go for panelling, saves the plastering mess.

Well, sorry, you could paint over plasterboard streight away, but you need to fill all the joints, screw holes, sand ... and it still doesn't look very nice. I think you get a superior finish with less fuss with nice MDF panelling that matches in style what you have on your other wall. The English Panelling Company is great imo.

Why can’t you remove the tiles and get the wall skimmed? We just did that in our kitchen and skimming was £300.

I might look into this. We had our bedroom plastered and it was about 350 if I remember. So I kind of thought that this would pricey in comparison to the panelling.

Thanks for the info. I have found tongue and groove panelling that would work and it seems pretty straightforward to fit. But my husband is being a pain in the arse about it and claims he doesn’t want it. Yet has no other solutions!

I think longer term you’d be happier with it fully gone rather than covered but I would have thought you could stick plaster board over it… we did that inside our old conservatory along the full panels that didn’t have glass so inside felt more room like.

Smash the tiles off, plasterboard sheets on top and paint, is not difficult, you can paint directly onto the boards, just use filler for the joints /screws etc