On Jul 30, 9:02 pm, "Steve" wrote:
Daughter just bought a 100 yr old home.
The bedroom walls, I'm told, are horsehair plaster.
I got a quick look at one of the walls today while they were Opening a wall
up to connect two bedrooms.
Looks like a 3x3 stud with horizontal lath.sp? About 3/8" of plaster over
the lath.
All the bedrooms were painted over wallpaper.
The paint peels right off of the paper in full sheets.
15 minutes to peel all the paint off the paper.
Now how to deal with the paper???
We've been told removing the paper can damage the plaster...
Son in law asked to borrow my sander to sand it smooth....
Anything special about horsehair plaster I should know ???
I've never seen paint peel off like this did...
What would be the best way to finish/repair these walls???
Buy the young couple a copy of Litchfield's book, Remodeling. It's a
good overview with a lot of information that will help them as they
work their way through the house.
There should be no need to use a power sander to remove the old
wallpaper/cloth unless they used an unusual adhesive. Generally it's
a water-soluble paste and the standard way of removing wallpaper
applies. Score the surface, spray on the water and enzyme mixture,
wait a bit, and start scraping with a wide bladed scraper. A few
small gouges is nothing to get bothered about as you'll have to do
patching anyway.
The real question is why they papered in the first place. If it was
purely cosmetic, you're lucky, but more likely it was to cover up the
cracks that kept appearing. If the plaster is still securely bonded
to the lath (rap it with your knuckles all over the walls and ceiling
and listen for changes in sound), then you might end up just
reapplying new cloth to cover up the cracks anyway.
If the cracks aren't too numerous, and the plaster is still securely
bonded to the lath, you could use a product I've had a lot of luck
with - Krack Kote - to cover the cracks. It's a stupid name, but the
stuff works.
http://www.tkocoatings.com/krack-kote.html
If the plaster isn't well bonded and there are a lot of cracks, then
you should certainly look into removing it all, insulating, re-wiring,
etc. as others have mentioned.
R