AIBU to disagree with DH that these walls need to be sanded?

[BaconBrownSauce]

Decent sized front bedroom, Victorian so walls are 9ft tall. We are now changing it to a nursery and want to paint the walls.

Unfortunately, whoever lived here before put a textured, gritty effect paint on the walls.

DH is saying we need to sand them all back to smooth. (He has a little handheld mouse sander!)

I think sanding will be a million times more trouble than it’s worth, the dust would be horrifying, and we should just live with it.

Who’s right?!

Looks like its scraping off quite easily?

Try a steamer on it to soften it up , you might find it will peel off with a scraper with minimal sanding after.

It really, truly, honestly isn’t. It’s paint. (See later pictures.)

Yes I will give this a go, may work?!

That's wood chip. You can't sand it off. You have to sweat it off with steam and scrape, and it may be hiding bad plaster. If I'm right, invest in the tools or pay someone to do it. It's not fun.

Okay, it might be artex

DO NOT SAND IT WITHOUT TESTING FOR ASBESTOS

I AM SERIOUS

ARTEX IN OLD HOUSES MUST BE HANDLED WITH CARE

LOTS ON THE INTERNET ABOUT THIS

It’s wallpaper that’s been painted, get a steamer and some wallpaper removing liquid from B&Q, you spray it on and leave it a bit then steam & get a scraper with a sharp edge, it’ll scrape off.

I will try the steamer but I don’t know how many more times I can say… it isn’t wallpaper!

It’s a layer of plaster, a layer of blue paint, a layer of pale yellow paint, and a layer of latex-y grey paint with a textured grit in.

You could try chipping it off with one of those tools you put plaster on with. It would take a long time.

I doubt sanding it would work very well and as pp says it's a lung risk plus if there is asbestos that's not good for you or baby.

I’m actually wondering if it’s one of those glitter wall paints that they’ve then painted over… they painted the bedroom walls chalk black so it wouldn’t surprise me…

I would just scrap it off, the picture with tweezers, does make it easy to do rather than steam.

That could be textured masonry paint, we had similar stuff in the hall of a flat we bought years ago. We called a decorator in who called another person who sanded it but OMFG the mess, the dust and the smell…. They had industrial sanders with extractor bags and even although we’d taped plastic to the doors leading to other rooms the dust was everywhere. We wore masks to clean the mess and you could feel the dust in your throat. I’d be very careful sanding that OP especially as you’re pregnant, please take the advice of a professional.

Get a wallpaper steamer and steam it off. Well, I'd probably try to push something up behind it like a wallpaper scraper first. Then steam. If it's not wallpaper and there's no glue, then steaming might just make it more adhesive rather than less.

I hate this stuff and every flat in Germany we've lived in has it. It "hides imperfections in the walls" apparently no it just makes the light bounce off in random directions and makes the room look dark.

FWIW if it won't come off easily - I would just paint over it.

Don't remove it if it's going to be a massive massive PITA. It isn't worth it. It's annoying when the walls are textured, but it's not the end of the world, and the yellow layer doesn't look smooth anyway, so if you want it smooth, it probably isn't going to look any smoother than it does now.

You know how you can get Polyfilla Crack Free ceilings which is a thicker white paint? Are there any other thick paints that could be used a base layer to make the bumps less obvious?

I’d hire a wallpaper steamer and try and remove it. But don’t worry about doing it now - we’re not doing the baby’s room until they need it at at least 6 months

I think you should try scoring it, then steaming, thenscraping - it looks as though it hasn't adhered very well and you might get most of it off like that. I would take a while but it's oddly satisfying. Make sure your scraper is sharp (use sandpaper on the edge to sharpen).

Yes absolutely.
I live in a house built in 1988 which in theory shouldn't contain asbestos in the artex.
Actually, it did as we found out when one of the ceilings collapsed due to a leak and insurance wanted it testing.
Builders were allowed to use old stock of artex despite them knowing that it could contain asbestos.

Please, please do not sand it and avoid picking bits off. Seriously!

You can apply artex thinly and that's what it looks like in this case.

Get a plasterer in.

How many more times are people going to say that OP needs to get it skimmed, or get a plasterer in? She's already said there's no way she can afford it!

The OP was talking about buying a Polyfilla type product to cover the walls. I reckon by the time they had bought that and needed a couple of layers, it wouldn't cost that much more to plaster.
Also what if they did a crap job? That stuff is hard to apply.

This 👆

Looks like wood chip to me.

That's wood chip.

I’ve scraped this off a wall and it is a kind of plastic paint with sand in it. Horrible. But you can scrape it off. Use a steamer to help

If I had a new baby, I'd just paint over it tbh and forget about it for a few years tbh

It looks like a Sandtex type paint. If it's scraping off like that then I'd take a paint scraper to it and try to peel it off.

It doesn't look anything like artex, which is a smooth paste that has been given a textured finish with sponges / brushes / tools. This has got bits of grit in it from what OP has said.

DGM had this all over the inside of her house. Imagine the horror when we were packing up when she moved out and discovered her husband had applied it around all the large mirrors she had dotted about the place rather than take them down. Smooth square patches in every room.